Inherited Disorders of the Ras-MAPK Pathway

RASopathies are a group of rare congenital diseases in which dysregulated signaling through the RAS-MAPK signaling cases is the critical pathogenetic mechanism. This definition excludes postnatally acquired conditions (e.g. RAS-MAPK driven neoplasms) and PIK3-AKT pathway related disorders as well as conditions with only ancillary RAS pathway involvement (e.g. KAT6B-, RAP1A/B-related disorders). The definition, however, includes the following categories: (1) Noonan syndrome and related disorders, specifically Noonan syndrome (NS), NS with multiple lentigines, NS-like disorder with loose anagen hair, CBL syndrome, cardiofaciocutaneous syndrome, and Costello syndrome); (2) Neurofibromatosis type 1 and the related disorders Neurofibromatosis-Noonan syndrome and Legius syndrome; (3) Mosaic RASopathies including a rapidly growing group of mainly (neuro)cutaneous disorders with "oncogenic" mutations in a somatic mosaic state; (4) RAS-MAPK pathway dysregulation without a NS-like phenotype including non-syndromic intellectual disability due to SYNGAP1mutations and capillary malformation-arteriovenous malformation/Parkes-Weber syndrome; (5) RAS-MAPK pathway defects without overactivation such as metachondromatosis. Germline mutations leading to Ras-MAPK dysregulation typically lead to a characteristic pattern of craniofacial anomalies, heart defects, shorts stature, and variable neurodevelopmental deficits as seen in NS and other RASopathies of category 1. Confirmed genes leading to RASopathies from this category include BRAF,CBL, HRAS, KRAS, MAP2K1, MAP2K1, NRAS, PTPN11, RAF1, RIT1, SHOC2, SOS1, LZTR1, and PPP1CB. Newer genes include SOS2, MRAS, RRAS, and RASA2. For some individual RASopathy disease entities, specific genotype associations exist, for others, this correlation is not tight. The cancer risk in many patients with RASopathies is only moderately increased, however, for a subgroup of patients the cancer risk is very high. These include patients with Costello syndrome (HRAS) who develop rhabdomyosarcoma, neuroblastoma and bladder cancer, patients with NF1 who develop juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML), neurofibroma/-fibrosarcoma, and brain tumors, and patients and with CBL syndrome who develop JMML. New clinical studies explore the use of RAS-MAPK Pathway inhibitors in this unique population. Various animal and in vitro models have been described, which (partially) recapitulate the human RASopathy phenotype and phenotypic rescue by manipulating RAS-MAPK signal flow has been demonstrated.