Wnt signaling pathways in urological cancers: past decades and still growing

Wnt and Related Signaling Pathways in Melanomagenesis

Given the pivotal roles of morphogen pathways including Wnt, Notch, Hedgehog, and BMP pathways in the development of the neural crest lineage, it is not surprising that these signaling networks have also been implicated in the biology of malignant melanoma. Understanding the mechanisms by which these pathways can alter cell fate and other biological properties in tumor cells will be essential f...

Met in Urological Cancers

Met is a tyrosine kinase receptor that is considered to be a proto-oncogene. The hepatocyte growth factor (HGF)-Met signaling system plays an important role in tumor growth, invasion, and metastasis in many types of malignancies. Furthermore, Met expression has been reported to be a useful predictive biomarker for disease progression and patient survival in these malignancies. Many studies have...

SnapShot: Noncanonical Wnt Signaling Pathways

The Wnt signaling pathways and cell adhesion.

In multicellular organisms, the processes of tissue and organ formation are governed by morphogenetic signaling pathways. The Wnt pathways regulate morphogenesis by controlling cell adhesion and migration; processes that when corrupted, lead to tumorgenesis. It is well known that the Wnt signaling pathways affect adhesion and migration via downstream effectors. Canonical Wnt signaling regulates...

The importance of personalized medicine in urological cancers

Personalized medicine (PM) refers to a set of medical, diagnostic, and therapeutic activities and approaches based on the specific characteristics of each patient chr ('39')s genome. In fact, individual-centered medical approaches are based on personalization, meaning that each person chr ('39')s gene sequence and polymorphisms (SNPs) are different and explain the different courses of urologica...