{"entity":{"id":"il11ra","kind":"target","name":"IL-11 receptor alpha","aka":[],"tldr":"The IL-11 receptor was the target of oprelvekin, the first drug approved to prevent the severe platelet falls that chemotherapy causes; the drug was withdrawn in 2011 and thrombopoietin agonists took over the problem.","summary":"Interleukin-11 receptor subunit alpha pairs with gp130 to carry the signal of interleukin-11, a cytokine that drives megakaryocytes to mature and release platelets. Recombinant IL-11 (oprelvekin, Neumega) was approved in the United States in 1997 to prevent severe thrombocytopenia after myelosuppressive chemotherapy, but fluid retention and cardiac side effects limited its use and it was withdrawn from the market in 2011. IL-11 signalling is now studied as a driver of fibrosis and of tumour-supporting inflammation in stomach and bowel cancers.","asOf":"2026-09-04","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interleukin_11_receptor_alpha_subunit","links":[{"label":"UniProt Q14626: IL11RA","url":"https://www.uniprot.org/uniprotkb/Q14626/entry"},{"label":"HGNC:5967 IL11RA","url":"https://www.genenames.org/data/gene-symbol-report/#!/hgnc_id/HGNC:5967"},{"label":"ChEMBL target CHEMBL2050","url":"https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/explore/target/CHEMBL2050"}],"tags":["chembl-gap"],"related":["jak2"],"cancers":["gastric","colorectal"],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":["oprelvekin"],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":["thrombocytopenia"],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"symbol":"IL11RA","role":[],"sources":[],"specificity":"immune-microenvironment","distribution":"few-types","specificityNote":"Immune or microenvironment target: its medicines act on immune, stromal or bone cells rather than on the tumour cell (drug mechanisms in the corpus). HPA IL11RA: RNA tissue enhanced (heart muscle 36 nTPM); high antibody staining in 7 normal tissues; highest cancer staining liver cancer (4 of 12 high). Distribution: 2 cancer families in the corpus carry a prevalence row, label threshold or catalogue link for it (Gastric & gastro-oesophageal junction cancer, Colorectal cancer); Open Targets associates it with 0 specific cancer types at or above 0.5. (Rule 1 of scripts/fetch-target-specificity.ts.)","specificitySources":[{"label":"Human Protein Atlas IL11RA tissue","url":"https://www.proteinatlas.org/ENSG00000137070-IL11RA/tissue","note":"RNA tissue and blood lineage specificity, normal tissue antibody staining (version 25.1, CC BY-SA 3.0)"},{"label":"UniProt Q14626","url":"https://www.uniprot.org/uniprotkb/Q14626/entry","note":"involvement in disease"},{"label":"Open Targets ENSG00000137070 associations","url":"https://platform.opentargets.org/target/ENSG00000137070/associations","note":"cancer associations at or above 0.5 (CC0)"}],"hgnc":"HGNC:5967","ensembl":"ENSG00000137070","uniprot":"Q14626","entrez":"3590","firstDescribed":1995,"firstDescribedBasis":"sequence","firstDescribedNote":"Earliest sequence paper UniProt cites for the protein: Cherel et al, Blood, 1995, \"Molecular cloning of two isoforms of a receptor for the human hematopoietic cytokine interleukin-11\".","firstDescribedSource":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7670098/","biology":"A cytokine receptor of the IL-6 family; ligand binding recruits gp130 and activates JAK-STAT3 signalling in megakaryocytes, epithelial cells and fibroblasts.","whereFound":["Megakaryocytes and bone marrow stroma","Gastric and colorectal tumour epithelium and fibroblasts"],"targetClass":"surface-antigen","prevalence":[{"cancerId":"metastatic-cancer","pct":"host","measure":"Host target: IL-11 receptor on platelet precursors. Not a tumour alteration, so no prevalence applies; the drug acts on normal tissue or on symptoms."}]},"route":"/targets/il11ra/","neighbours":{"target":[{"id":"jak2","kind":"target","name":"JAK2","route":"/targets/jak2/"}],"cancer":[{"id":"colorectal","kind":"cancer","name":"Colorectal cancer","route":"/cancers/colorectal/"},{"id":"gastric","kind":"cancer","name":"Gastric & gastro-oesophageal junction cancer","route":"/cancers/gastric/"}],"drug":[{"id":"oprelvekin","kind":"drug","name":"Oprelvekin","route":"/drugs/oprelvekin/"}],"term":[{"id":"thrombocytopenia","kind":"term","name":"Thrombocytopenia","route":"/terms/thrombocytopenia/"}]}}