{"entity":{"id":"axl","kind":"target","name":"AXL","aka":[],"tldr":"A receptor that helps cancer cells survive stress, resist treatment and spread. Cabozantinib is among the multi-kinase drugs that block it, and dedicated AXL inhibitors and antibody-drug conjugates are in trials.","summary":"AXL, a TAM-family receptor activated by the ligand GAS6, drives epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, invasion and immune suppression and is switched on as cancers become resistant to EGFR, ALK and BRAF inhibitors and to chemotherapy. Cabozantinib inhibits AXL alongside MET and VEGFR2, which is thought to contribute to its activity in kidney, liver and thyroid cancers after other treatments. Selective AXL inhibitors such as bemcentinib and the AXL-directed antibody-drug conjugate enapotamab vedotin have been tested without a clear win so far, and AXL remains a resistance target of high interest.","asOf":"2026-09-04","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AXL_receptor_tyrosine_kinase","links":[{"label":"UniProt P30530: AXL","url":"https://www.uniprot.org/uniprotkb/P30530/entry"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":["rcc","hcc","thyroid"],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":["cabozantinib"],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"symbol":"AXL","role":[],"sources":[],"specificity":"broadly-expressed","distribution":"few-types","specificityNote":"Broadly expressed or essential: HPA finds the RNA at low tissue specificity; the 1 medicine aimed at it (Cabozantinib) act on the wild-type protein, so normal tissue is exposed and the therapeutic window comes from the tumour's faster division or its dependence on the protein. HPA AXL: RNA low tissue specificity; blood lineage group enriched (dendritic cells 26 nTPM, NK-cells 11 nTPM); no normal tissue stained high. Distribution: 4 cancer families in the corpus carry a prevalence row, label threshold or catalogue link for it (Lung cancer (all types), Renal cell carcinoma, Hepatocellular carcinoma, Thyroid cancer); Open Targets associates it with 1 specific cancer type at or above 0.5 (acute myeloid leukemia). (Rule 7 of scripts/fetch-target-specificity.ts.)","specificitySources":[{"label":"Human Protein Atlas AXL tissue","url":"https://www.proteinatlas.org/ENSG00000167601-AXL/tissue","note":"RNA tissue and blood lineage specificity, normal tissue antibody staining (version 25.1, CC BY-SA 3.0)"},{"label":"Open Targets ENSG00000167601 associations","url":"https://platform.opentargets.org/target/ENSG00000167601/associations","note":"cancer associations at or above 0.5 (CC0)"}],"hgnc":"HGNC:905","ensembl":"ENSG00000167601","uniprot":"P30530","entrez":"558","firstDescribed":1990,"firstDescribedBasis":"sequence","firstDescribedNote":"Earliest sequence paper UniProt cites for the protein: Partanen et al, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A, 1990, \"Putative tyrosine kinases expressed in K-562 human leukemia cells\".","firstDescribedSource":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2247464/","biology":"TAM-family receptor tyrosine kinase activated by GAS6; mediates mesenchymal transition and acquired resistance to targeted therapy.","whereFound":["Kidney, liver and thyroid cancers treated with cabozantinib","Drug-resistant lung cancer, melanoma and triple-negative breast cancer"],"targetClass":"kinase","prevalence":[{"cancerId":"nsclc","pct":"about 20","measure":"AXL activation among EGFR-mutant lung cancers resistant to EGFR inhibitors","source":"https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.2330"}]},"route":"/targets/axl/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"hcc","kind":"cancer","name":"Hepatocellular carcinoma","route":"/cancers/hcc/"},{"id":"rcc","kind":"cancer","name":"Renal cell carcinoma","route":"/cancers/rcc/"},{"id":"thyroid","kind":"cancer","name":"Thyroid cancer","route":"/cancers/thyroid/"}],"drug":[{"id":"cabozantinib","kind":"drug","name":"Cabozantinib","route":"/drugs/cabozantinib/"}],"company":[{"id":"qurient","kind":"company","name":"Qurient","route":"/companies/qurient/"}]}}