Department of Pathology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Largo A. Gemelli 8, 00168, Roma, Italy,
Virchows Arch. 2013 Oct;463(4):481-7. doi: 10.1007/s00428-013-1467-4. Epub 2013 Aug 23.
Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are the most common mesenchymal tumors of the gastrointestinal tract. They have represented a paradigm of molecular-targeted therapies for solid tumors since the discovery of KIT mutations and KIT expression in GIST in 1998, which opened the way to the use of imatinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor able to inhibit the growth of cells expressing KIT-mutant isoforms. Since then, accumulating evidence revealed the rather heterogeneous nature of GIST, implying possible different diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for each specific case, leading to the development of drugs alternative to imatinib. In this brief commentary, we graphically represent the historical growing of genotype and phenotype evidence on GIST since 1998 in its increasing complexity by building up a graph, which we have called "GISTogram", that visually conveys most of GIST-characterizing features and the probability for each of them, either alone or in combination, to be observed in a single GIST case.
胃肠道间质瘤（GISTs）是胃肠道最常见的间叶性肿瘤。自 1998 年发现 GIST 中的 KIT 突变和 KIT 表达以来，它们代表了实体瘤分子靶向治疗的范例，这为伊马替尼的应用开辟了道路，伊马替尼是一种能够抑制表达 KIT 突变体同工型的细胞生长的酪氨酸激酶抑制剂。从那时起，越来越多的证据揭示了 GIST 的相当异质性，这意味着每个具体病例可能需要不同的诊断和治疗方法，从而导致了替代伊马替尼的药物的发展。在这篇简短的评论中，我们通过构建一个图形，即“GISTogram”，以图形方式展示了自 1998 年以来 GIST 基因型和表型证据在不断增加的复杂性方面的历史增长，该图形直观地传达了大多数 GIST 的特征以及它们中的每一个单独或组合在单个 GIST 病例中被观察到的可能性。
