Dr. Woyach on the Role of BTK in CLL

Jennifer Woyach, MD, assistant professor of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology, The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the role of Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).

Woyach says BTK is not a gene that has been found to be recurrently mutated in CLL, but the gene is overexpressed at the transcript level. At the protein level, BTK is slightly more variable, but is seen to be overexpressed in many patients, Woyach explains.

It has also been show that BTK and other members of this pathway are constitutively phosphorylated in this disease, Woyach says, likely causing the activation and accumulation of the downstream targets.