Review Article

Advances in Targeting HER3 as an Anticancer Therapy

Figure 1

General features of the HER family. EGFR, HER3, HER4 have intact ligand binding sites. HER2 fails to bind any known ErbB ligands and HER3 has impaired catalytic activity. Two main strategies to target HER receptors for cancer treatment include monoclonal antibody (mAb) and tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) approaches. The HER2-HER3 heterodimer is considered the most potent HER pair as an oncogenic unit and is illustrated as a representative dimer. Two key signaling pathways activated by the HER family dimers are the MAPK pathway and the PI3 K/Akt pathway. Activation of HER3 leads to transcription of genes that drive cell proliferation, migration, differentiation and angiogenesis [12, 15].
817304.fig.001