Bioinformatic Mining of Gene Expression Datasets Identifies ETV1 as a Critical Regulator of Oncogenesis in Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors

KIT mutations are the hallmark of gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs). In a paper recently published in Nature, Sawyers and colleagues demonstrate that ETV1 collaborates with oncogenic KIT to initiate a GIST-specific transcriptional program. These results radically alter our view of GIST oncogenesis and have important implications for diagnosis and therapy.