{"entity":{"id":"epha2","kind":"target","name":"EphA2 receptor","aka":[],"tldr":"EphA2 is a cell-guidance receptor that many solid tumours overexpress; dasatinib and regorafenib block it among their many kinase targets, and it is being tested as an antibody-drug conjugate and CAR-T target.","summary":"Ephrin type-A receptor 2 helps cells read their neighbours' positions during development and is overexpressed in glioblastoma, ovarian, breast, lung and pancreatic cancers, where ligand-independent signalling promotes invasion. Dasatinib and regorafenib inhibit it as secondary targets. Antibody-drug conjugates and CAR-T cells against EphA2 have reached early trials, notably in glioblastoma.","asOf":"2026-09-04","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPH_receptor_A2","links":[{"label":"UniProt P29317: EPHA2","url":"https://www.uniprot.org/uniprotkb/P29317/entry"},{"label":"HGNC:3386 EPHA2","url":"https://www.genenames.org/data/gene-symbol-report/#!/hgnc_id/HGNC:3386"},{"label":"ChEMBL target CHEMBL2068","url":"https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/explore/target/CHEMBL2068"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":["glioblastoma","ovarian"],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":["dasatinib","regorafenib"],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"symbol":"EPHA2","role":[],"sources":[],"specificity":"tumour-associated","distribution":"few-types","specificityNote":"Tumour-associated overexpression: HPA finds the RNA tissue enhanced in normal esophagus, so the tumour and the normal tissue it comes from share the target and the medicine relies on the difference in level. HPA EPHA2: RNA tissue enhanced (esophagus 143 nTPM); blood lineage lineage enriched (dendritic cells 9 nTPM); no normal tissue stained high. Distribution: 2 cancer families in the corpus carry a prevalence row, label threshold or catalogue link for it (Brain and spinal cord tumours (all types), Ovarian cancer); Open Targets associates it with 4 specific cancer types at or above 0.5 (colorectal cancer, chronic myeloid leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, medullary thyroid gland carcinoma). (Rule 7 of scripts/fetch-target-specificity.ts.)","specificitySources":[{"label":"Human Protein Atlas EPHA2 tissue","url":"https://www.proteinatlas.org/ENSG00000142627-EPHA2/tissue","note":"RNA tissue and blood lineage specificity, normal tissue antibody staining (version 25.1, CC BY-SA 3.0)"},{"label":"Human Protein Atlas EPHA2 pathology","url":"https://www.proteinatlas.org/ENSG00000142627-EPHA2/pathology","note":"patients per staining level per cancer type (version 25.1, CC BY-SA 3.0)"},{"label":"Open Targets ENSG00000142627 associations","url":"https://platform.opentargets.org/target/ENSG00000142627/associations","note":"cancer associations at or above 0.5 (CC0)"}],"hgnc":"HGNC:3386","ensembl":"ENSG00000142627","uniprot":"P29317","entrez":"1969","firstDescribed":1990,"firstDescribedBasis":"sequence","firstDescribedNote":"Earliest sequence paper UniProt cites for the protein: Lindberg R.A. et al, Mol. Cell. Biol, 1990, \"cDNA cloning and characterization of eck, an epithelial cell receptor protein-tyrosine kinase in the eph/elk family of protein kinases\".","firstDescribedSource":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2174105/","biology":"A receptor tyrosine kinase for ephrin-A ligands; ligand binding suppresses growth signalling, while unliganded EphA2 phosphorylated by AKT drives motility.","whereFound":["Glioblastoma, ovarian, breast, lung and pancreatic cancers (overexpressed)","Low in normal adult epithelium"],"targetClass":"kinase","prevalence":[{"cancerId":"metastatic-cancer","pct":"all","measure":"Signalling protein present in most cells (EphA2 receptor, over-expressed in many solid tumours without a selecting mutation); drugs act on the pathway rather than on a mutation that selects patients, so no prevalence applies."}]},"route":"/targets/epha2/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"glioblastoma","kind":"cancer","name":"Glioma & glioblastoma","route":"/cancers/glioblastoma/"},{"id":"ovarian","kind":"cancer","name":"Ovarian cancer","route":"/cancers/ovarian/"}],"drug":[{"id":"dasatinib","kind":"drug","name":"Dasatinib","route":"/drugs/dasatinib/"},{"id":"regorafenib","kind":"drug","name":"Regorafenib","route":"/drugs/regorafenib/"}]}}