THE RESPONSE OF NEUROENDOCRINE TUMOR TO IMATINIB THERAPY: IS IT POSSIBLE?

Abstract

Purpose. To describe the case of neuroendocrine tumors (NET) response to low molecular weight tyrosine kinase inhibitor imatinib. The latter is widely used for the treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia as well as gastrointestinal stromal tumors. It inhibits tyrosine kinase BCR-ABL, tyrosine kinase KIT receptors and platelet-derived growth factor receptors (PDGFR), however it has never been approved for the treatment of NET.Material and methods. We report the case of NET liver lesion stabilization according to the ultrasound follow-up during the whole imatinib (400 mg daily) therapy period lasting 33 months. 10 months after the imatinib discontinuation the patient developed disease progression that eventually led to the death caused by the congestive heart disease 98Results. We also discussed the literature data concerning the attempts to use imatinib for the treatment of NET. We found few reports of unexpectedly long remission and/or stabilization of NET in patients receiving imatinib.Conclusion. The presented data show that it looks reasonable to identify the NET subtypes sensitive to imatinib. We believe that such approach is able to develop the new treatment strategies as well as to reveal the NET patient subgroups that can benefit from the imatinib therapy.