Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UNIPROT:O76050 (neu)
 3,969 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Cancer stem cells, also known as tumour-initiating cells (TICs), are identified as highly tumorigenic population within tumours and hypothesized to be main regulators in tumour growth, metastasis and relapse. Evidence also suggests that a tumour microenvironment plays a critical role in the development and progression of cancer, by constantly modulating cell-matrix interactions. Scientists have tried to characterize and identify the TIC population but the actual combination of extracellular components in deciphering the fate of TICs has not been explored. The basic unanswered question is the phenotypic stability of this TIC population in a tissue extracellular matrix setting. The in vivo complexity makes it difficult to identify parameters in a diverse milieu that affect TICs behaviour. Herein we studied how the TIC population would respond when subjected to a unique microenvironment composed of different extracellular proteins. The TIC-enriched population isolated from a Her2/neu-induced mouse mammary tumour was cultured on collagen, fibronectin and laminin coated substrates for one to two weeks. Our observations indicate that a laminin substrate can maintain the majority of the self-renewing and tumorigenic TIC population, whereas collagen induced a more differentiated phenotype of the cells. Also interestingly, fibronectin substrates dictated an invasive phenotype of TICs as evidenced from the EMT-related gene expression pattern. The results of this study signify that the microenvironmental cues play a considerable role in tumour relapse and progression by altering the cancer stem cell behaviour and thus this knowledge could be used to design novel cancer therapeutics.
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PMID:Breast tumour initiating cell fate is regulated by microenvironmental cues from an extracellular matrix. 2272 98

Preclinical evaluation of therapeutic agents against metastatic breast cancer require cell lines and animal models that recapitulate clinical metastatic breast cancer as much as possible. We have previously used cell lines derived from the neu-N transgenic model to investigate anti-neu targeting of metastatic breast cancer using an alpha-emitter labeled antibody reactive with the rat variant of HER2/neu expressed by the neu-N model. To investigate alpha-particle emitter targeting of metastatic breast cancer using clinically relevant, commercially available anti-HER2/neu antibodies, we have developed cell lines derived from primary tumors and lung metastases from HuHER2 transgenic mice. We extracted primary mammary gland tumors, isolated the epithelial breast cancer cells, and established seven different cell lines. We also established 2 different cell lines from spontaneous lung metastases and cell lines from a serial transplantation of tumor tissues in HuHER2 transgenic mice. HuHER2 protein was overexpressed in all of the established cell lines. The mRNA level of ER (estrogen receptor) and PR (progesterone receptor) was relatively low in the cell lines compared to normal mammary gland (MG). As EMT markers, the expression of E-Cadherin in the cell lines was downregulated while the expression of TWIST1 and Vimentin were upregulated, relative to MG. Furthermore, trastuzumab directly inhibited cellular viability. Biodistribution studies with 111In-DTPA-trastuzumab in HuHER2 cell tumor xenografts demonstrated specific targeting with a clinically relevant antibody. Collectively, these cell lines show all the hallmarks of highly aggressive, metastatic breast cancer and are being used to evaluate combination therapy with alpha-particle emitter labeled HER2/neu reactive antibodies.
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PMID:Human HER2 overexpressing mouse breast cancer cell lines derived from MMTV.f.HuHER2 mice: characterization and use in a model of metastatic breast cancer. 2897 97