Smoothened (hedgehog pathway)
The switch in the hedgehog developmental pathway that is stuck on in basal cell carcinoma and some medulloblastomas; three approved pills block it. This dossier gathers the 3 products (3 approved), 0 trials, 1 pathway and 0 resistance routes in the corpus that involve it, with external identifiers so it can be joined to UniProt, ChEMBL, Open Targets and the rest of biology.
Biology
Seven-transmembrane Frizzled-class receptor; cholesterol binding to its cysteine-rich domain and transmembrane site activates it once PTCH1 inhibition is relieved, translocating to the primary cilium and derepressing GLI2/3.
- Basal cell carcinoma (PTCH1 ~70%, SMO ~10-20%)
- SHH medulloblastoma (~30% of medulloblastoma)
- Gorlin syndrome (germline PTCH1/SUFU)
- AML (pathway activity in leukaemic stem cells)
Elsewhere: identifiers and databases
Built from HGNC, Ensembl, UniProt and ChEMBL idsHow common it is, by cancer
Full matrix →| Cancer | Prevalence | Measure | Note | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basal cell carcinoma | 85% | hedgehog pathway activation (PTCH1 or SMO) | doi.org | |
| Medulloblastoma | 30% | SHH subgroup |
Approximate, population-level figures; the measure column says what was counted. Ranges show the midpoint as a bar.
Products by modality and phase
Browse products →| Modality | Approved |
|---|---|
| Small molecule 3 |
Trials
Evidence ranking →No trial in the corpus names this target or one of its products.
Resistance routes that involve this target
Unaddressed routes →The resistance atlas has no route that names this target.
Pathways where it is a node
Pathway-to-drug matrix →- Fibroblast activation, desmoplasia & matrix stiffnessNode: Hedgehog (SMO) paradox · 4 druggable nodes
Tumours recruit the body's repair cells, fibroblasts, and keep them in wound-healing mode forever. The scar tissue they lay down (desmoplasia) squeezes blood vessels shut, walls out immune cells, stiffens the tissue in a way that itself tells cancer cells to grow, and is why pancreatic cancer is so hard to treat.
Which nodes have drugs →
Companion diagnostics and assays
Assay registry →No companion diagnostic in the registry measures this target.
Preclinical models
All models →No model entry for this target yet; check the cancer entries on the models page.
Open questions
All open questions →No open questions recorded for this target yet. Suggest one.
Ideas and companies
Key papers and the live literature
Preprints →Query for this target: (TITLE:"Smoothened" OR ABSTRACT:"Smoothened" OR TITLE:"hedgehog pathway" OR ABSTRACT:"hedgehog pathway" OR TITLE:"SMO" OR ABSTRACT:"SMO") AND (cancer OR tumor OR tumour OR oncology OR carcinoma OR lymphoma OR leukemia OR leukaemia OR myeloma OR sarcoma OR melanoma OR glioma). Results are unfiltered search hits about Smoothened (hedgehog pathway), not a curated reading list.
Export
The dossier as machine-readable JSON: identifiers from HGNC, Ensembl, UniProt and ChEMBL, products with status, trials, pathways, hotspots, open questions and assays. The full entity record is in the open API at /api/v1/entities/smoothened.json. Licence CC BY 4.0.