{"entity":{"id":"eef2","kind":"target","name":"Elongation factor 2 (EEF2)","aka":[],"tldr":"EEF2 is the ribosome's motor for moving along messenger RNA; the CML drug omacetaxine stalls protein production by acting at this step.","summary":"Eukaryotic elongation factor 2 (EEF2) drives the translocation step of protein synthesis, moving the ribosome one codon along the messenger RNA after each amino acid is added. Omacetaxine mepesuccinate (homoharringtonine) binds the ribosome's A-site and blocks the first elongation steps, so short-lived proteins such as BCR-ABL1 and MCL1 fall quickly; the drug is approved for chronic myeloid leukaemia after two tyrosine kinase inhibitors.","asOf":"2026-09-04","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EEF2","links":[{"label":"UniProt P13639: EEF2","url":"https://www.uniprot.org/uniprotkb/P13639/entry"},{"label":"HGNC:3214 EEF2","url":"https://www.genenames.org/data/gene-symbol-report/#!/hgnc_id/HGNC:3214"},{"label":"ChEMBL target CHEMBL1795108","url":"https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/explore/target/CHEMBL1795108"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":["cml"],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":["omacetaxine"],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"symbol":"EEF2","role":[],"sources":[],"specificity":"broadly-expressed","distribution":"one-type","specificityNote":"Broadly expressed or essential: HPA lists EEF2 among essential proteins and finds the RNA at low tissue specificity; the 2 medicines aimed at it (Omacetaxine mepesuccinate, Plitidepsin) 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 EEF2: RNA low tissue specificity; high antibody staining in 33 normal tissues; highest cancer staining endometrial cancer (11 of 11 high). Distribution: 1 cancer family in the corpus carries a prevalence row, label threshold or catalogue link for it (Leukaemia); approvals of single-target medicines aimed at it also list Multiple myeloma, not counted; Open Targets associates it with 2 specific cancer types at or above 0.5 (primary cutaneous T-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma, hairy cell leukemia); the corpus evidence decides and the Open Targets list is quoted for comparison. (Rule 7 of scripts/fetch-target-specificity.ts.)","specificitySources":[{"label":"Human Protein Atlas EEF2 tissue","url":"https://www.proteinatlas.org/ENSG00000167658-EEF2/tissue","note":"RNA tissue and blood lineage specificity, normal tissue antibody staining (version 25.1, CC BY-SA 3.0)"},{"label":"Open Targets ENSG00000167658 associations","url":"https://platform.opentargets.org/target/ENSG00000167658/associations","note":"cancer associations at or above 0.5 (CC0)"}],"hgnc":"HGNC:3214","ensembl":"ENSG00000167658","uniprot":"P13639","entrez":"1938","firstDescribed":1988,"firstDescribedBasis":"sequence","firstDescribedNote":"Earliest sequence paper UniProt cites for the protein: Rapp et al, Biol. Chem. Hoppe-Seyler, 1988, \"Cloning and sequence analysis of a cDNA from human ovarian granulosa cells encoding the C-terminal part of human elongation factor 2\".","firstDescribedSource":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2840927/","biology":"A GTPase of the translation machinery; its activity is switched off by phosphorylation from eEF2 kinase under stress and starvation, one of the ways cells throttle protein synthesis.","whereFound":["All nucleated cells (housekeeping translation factor)","Highly active in rapidly dividing leukaemia and lymphoma cells"],"targetClass":"enzyme","prevalence":[{"cancerId":"metastatic-cancer","pct":"all","measure":"Housekeeping enzyme present in every dividing cell (protein synthesis); not a selection marker, which is why these drugs are given by cancer type rather than by test."}]},"route":"/targets/eef2/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"cml","kind":"cancer","name":"Chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML)","route":"/cancers/cml/"}],"drug":[{"id":"omacetaxine","kind":"drug","name":"Omacetaxine mepesuccinate","route":"/drugs/omacetaxine/"},{"id":"plitidepsin","kind":"drug","name":"Plitidepsin","route":"/drugs/plitidepsin/"}]}}