Tyrosine kinase inhibitors are currently being used for cancer chemotherapy. Tyrosine kinase receptors are a family of receptors that naturally occur in nature and are often over-expressed in neoplastic cancer cells. They each have a tyrosine kinase domain (which phosphorylates proteins on tyrosine residues), a hormone-binding domain, and a carboxyl-terminal segment with multiple tyrosines for autophosphorylation.
Two examples of tyrosine kinase inhibitors, as described in the review by Shawver et al. are Herceptin for the treatment of breast cancer and Gleevec for chronic myelogenous leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumors.
