Novel splicing variants of recepteur d'origine nantais (RON) tyrosine kinase involving exons 15-19 in lung cancer

Results of our study indicate common occurrence of different types of alternatively spliced transcripts of RON in lung cancer with potential to be translated into proteins lacking active kinase domain. Our findings suggest that tumors produce several dominant negative isoforms which probably inhibit ligand dependent RON signaling, and hence, raise important questions regarding the appropriateness of blocking wild type RON signaling for therapy. Further, presence of transcript variants and their isoform products may interfere with quantitative and functional analysis during target validation.