Effects of tyrosine kinase inhibitor STI571 on human mast cells bearing wild-type or mutated c-kit

STI571 is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor which inhibits the kinase activity of kit, the receptor for stem cell factor (SCF). Because activating mutations of c-kit affecting codon 816 are associated with human mast cell neoplasms, we determined whether STI571 exerted a similar cytotoxic effect on neoplastic and normal human mast cells.We investigated the effect of addition of STI571 in increasing concentrations (0.01 to 10 micromolar) to two HMC-1...