Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0178874 (tumor progression)
 40,807 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Androgen receptor (AR) signaling pathway remains the foremost target of novel therapeutics for castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). However, the expression of constitutively active AR variants lacking the carboxy-terminal region in CRPC may lead to therapy inefficacy. These AR variants are supposed to support PCa cell growth in an androgen-depleted environment, but their mode of action still remains unresolved. Moreover, recent studies indicate that constitutively active AR variants are expressed in primary prostate tumors and may contribute to tumor progression. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of constitutively active AR variants on the expression of tumor progression markers. N-cadherin expression was analyzed in LNCaP cells overexpressing the wild type AR or a constitutively active AR variant by qRT-PCR, Western blot and immunofluorescence. We showed here for the first time that N-cadherin expression was increased in the presence of constitutively active AR variants. These results were confirmed in C4-2B cells overexpressing these AR variants. Although N-cadherin expression is often associated with a downregulation of E-cadherin, this phenomenon was not observed in our model. Nevertheless, in addition to the increased expression of N-cadherin, an upregulation of other mesenchymal markers expression such as VIMENTIN, SNAIL and ZEB1 was observed in the presence of constitutively active variants. In conclusion, our findings highlight novel consequences of constitutively active AR variants on the regulation of mesenchymal markers in prostate cancer.
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PMID:Constitutively active androgen receptor variants upregulate expression of mesenchymal markers in prostate cancer cells. 2365 30

Cancer stem cells are responsible for tumor progression, metastasis, therapy resistance and cancer recurrence, doing their identification and isolation of special relevance. Here we show that low adherent breast and colon cancer cells subpopulations have stem-like properties. Our results demonstrate that trypsin-sensitive (TS) breast and colon cancer cells subpopulations show increased ALDH activity, higher ability to exclude Hoechst 33342, enlarged proportion of cells with a cancer stem-like cell phenotype and are enriched in sphere- and colony-forming cells in vitro. Further studies in MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells reveal that TS subpopulation expresses higher levels of SLUG, SNAIL, VIMENTIN and N-CADHERIN while show a lack of expression of E-CADHERIN and CLAUDIN, being this profile characteristic of the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). The TS subpopulation shows CXCL10, BMI-1 and OCT4 upregulation, differing also in the expression of several miRNAs involved in EMT and/or cell self-renewal such as miR-34a-5p, miR-34c-5p, miR-21-5p, miR-93-5p and miR-100-5p. Furthermore, in vivo studies in immunocompromised mice demonstrate that MDA-MB-231 TS cells form more and bigger xenograft tumors with shorter latency and have higher metastatic potential. In conclusion, this work presents a new, non-aggressive, easy, inexpensive and reproducible methodology to isolate prospectively cancer stem-like cells for subsequent biological and preclinical studies.
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PMID:Low adherent cancer cell subpopulations are enriched in tumorigenic and metastatic epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition-induced cancer stem-like cells. 2675 44

Heat shock protein 70-2 (HSP70-2) is known to be involved in tumor progression. However, its molecular role and mechanism in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) remains unknown. In the present investigation, we examined the role of HSP70-2 in cell cycle, apoptosis and epithelial mesenchymal transition pathways in EOC cells in in vitro and in-vivo xenograft mouse model. To investigate the role of HSP70-2 in ovarian cancer, plasmid driven short hairpin RNA approach was used to examine HSP70-2 gene and protein expression in ovarian cancer cell line A-10 (origin: serous papillary cystadenocarcinoma), Caov-3 (origin: adenocarcinoma) and SKOV3 (origin: adenocarcinoma; derived from metastatic site: ascites) by RT-PCR, quantitative-PCR, immunohistochemistry and Western blotting. Light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, viability tests, and flow cytometry were used to study the cellular proliferation, onset of senescence, colony forming ability and morphological features of cancer cells. Cell migration and invasion ability was evaluated by wound healing and Boyden chamber assays. Further, we studied the effect of HSP70-2 protein ablation on human ovarian xenograft mice model. At molecular level, various molecules involved in apoptosis, cell cycle and epithelial-mesenchymal-transition were also examined both in in-vitro and in-vivo xenograft mouse model. The knockdown of HSP70-2 expression by gene silencing resulted in the onset of apoptosis, senescence, reduced cellular growth and colony forming ability of EOC cells. Interestingly, the migration, invasion and wound healing abilities of cells were also significantly inhibited. In addition, the ablation of HSP70-2 resulted in the upregulation of cytochrome-C, caspase 3, caspase 7, caspase 9, APAF1, BAX, BIM, BAK, BAD, BID, PUMA, NOXA, p16, p21, Rb, E-cadherin, cytokeratin 18, EMA in these cells as well as in the xenograft tumor specimens. However, there was downregulation of PARP1, BCL-2, Bcl-xL, MCL-1, Survivin, XIAP, cIAP2, CDK1, CDK2, CDK4, CDK6, cyclin D1, cyclin E, cyclin A2, cyclin B1, p-Rb, N-cadherin, SNAIL, SLUG, VIMENTIN, SMA, MMP2, MMP3, MMP9 and TWIST in these samples. Furthermore, the xenograft studies showed significant reduction in the tumor growth. Our results suggest that HSP70-2 can promote cellular growth and invasion of EOC cells and therefore may be a potential therapeutic target in EOC.
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PMID:Heat shock protein 70-2 (HSP70-2) a novel cancer testis antigen that promotes growth of ovarian cancer. 3264