A new mechanism of BRAF activation in human thyroid papillary carcinomas

In this issue of the JCI, Ciampi et al. report the identification of a novel oncogene in patients affected by radiation-associated thyroid papillary carcinomas. This oncogene derives from a paracentric inversion of the long arm of chromosome 7, which results in an in-frame fusion of the N-terminus of the A-kinase anchor protein 9 (AKAP9) gene with the C-terminal catalytic domain (exons 9-18) of the serine-threonine kinase BRAF. The resulting AKAP9-BRAF fusion protein shows constitutive kinase activity, and it is able to transmit mitogenic signals to the MAPK pathways and to promote malignant transformation of NIH3T3 cells.