Are any solid tumor types especially well or poorly suited for KGF treatment?
Currently, definitive evidence concerning the preferential use or avoidance of KGF in a particular solid tumor setting is lacking. Preliminary indications suggest that KGF might be beneficial for the treatment of bladder, salivary, and perhaps prostate cancer, based on data showing that the introduction of FGFR2b into malignant cells from these tumor types induced cell differentiation or apoptosis (150 153). On the other hand, KGF has been found to inhibit apoptosis in ER-positive breast tumor cells (102,142) and to promote their motility (130,131), and prolonged expression of a KGF transgene in mouse mammary epithelium ultimately resulted in neoplasia (144). In addition, KGF specifically stimulated the growth of gastric carcinoma cells derived from scirrhous tumors, but not those from well-differentiated adenocarcinomas (97,129). Furthermore, the FGFR2b isoform K-sam-IIC3, which exhibits elevated transforming activity (155), is amplified in stomach cancer cell lines (154,155). Thus, p
