Scientific background: |
KDR (Kinase Insert Domain Receptor), also known as FLK1, VEGFR or VEGFR2, is a VEGF receptor. KDR is the human gene encoding it. Sait et al. (1995) likewise corrected the assignment to chromosome 4q11-q12 to the same region occupied also by PDGFRA and KIT, thus indicating the location of a cluster of receptor tyrosine kinase genes. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is the only mitogen that specifically acts on endothelial cells. Its expression is upregulated by hypoxia, and its cell-surface receptor, known as fetal liver kinase-1 (Flk1) in mouse, is exclusively expressed in endothelial cells (Plate et al., 1993). Flk1 is the mouse homolog of KDR (Matthews et al., 1991). |
References: |
1. Matthews, W., Jordan, C. T., Gavin, M., Jenkins, N. A., Copeland, N. G., Lemischka, I. R. A receptor tyrosine kinase cDNA isolated from a population of enriched primitive hematopoietic cells and exhibiting close genetic linkage to c-kit. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 88: 9026-9030, 1991.
2. Plate, K. H., Breier, G., Millauer, B., Ullrich, A., Risau, W. Up-regulation of vascular endothelial growth factor and its cognate receptors in a rat glioma model of tumor angiogenesis. Cancer Res. 53: 5822-5827, 1993.
3. Sait, S. N. J., Dougher-Vermazen, M., Shows, T. B., Terman, B. I. The kinase insert domain receptor gene (KDR) has been relocated to chromosome 4q11-q12. Cytogenet. Cell Genet. 70: 145-146, 1995
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