Breast cancers are thought to be organized hierarchically with a small number of breast cancer stem cells (BCSCs) able to re-grow a tumor while their progeny lack this ability. Recently, several groups reported enrichment for BCSCs when breast cancers were subjected to classical anticancer treatment. However, the underlying mechanisms leading to this enrichment are incompletely understood. Usin...

Using a syngeneic p53-null mouse mammary gland tumor model that closely mimics human breast cancer, we have identified, by limiting dilution transplantation and in vitro mammosphere assay, a Lin CD29CD24 subpopulation of tumor-initiating cells. Upon subsequent transplantation, this subpopulation generated heterogeneous tumors that displayed properties similar to the primary tumor. Analysis of b...

Using a syngeneic p53-null mouse mammary gland tumor model that closely mimics human breast cancer, we have identified, by limiting dilution transplantation and in vitro mammosphere assay, a Lin(-)CD29(H)CD24(H) subpopulation of tumor-initiating cells. Upon subsequent transplantation, this subpopulation generated heterogeneous tumors that displayed properties similar to the primary tumor. Analy...

BAG3 is an evolutionarily conserved co-chaperone expressed at high levels and has a prosurvival role in many tumor types. The current study reported that BAG3 was induced under specific floating culture conditions that enrich breast cancer stem cell (BCSC)-like cells in spheres. Ectopic BAG3 overexpression increased CD44+/CD24- CSC subpopulations, first-generation and second-generation mammosph...

Cancer stem cells are involved in cancer establishment, progression, and resistance to current treatments. We demonstrated the in vitro and in vivo anti-breast cancer effect of bakuchiol in a previous study. However, the ability of bakuchiol to target breast cancer stem cells (BCSCs) and inhibit breast cancer metastasis remains unknown. In the current study, we used the cell surface markers CD4...

Effective therapeutic strategies for in vivo siRNA delivery to knockdown genes in cells outside the liver are needed to harness RNA interference for treating cancer. EpCAM is a tumor-associated antigen highly expressed on common epithelial cancers and their tumor-initiating cells (TIC, also known as cancer stem cells). Here, we show that aptamer-siRNA chimeras (AsiC, an EpCAM aptamer linked to ...

Morphine is an opioid analgesic drug commonly used for pain relief in cancer patients. Here, we report that morphine enhances the mammosphere forming capacity and increases the expression of stemness-related transcription factors Oct4, Sox2 and Nanog. Treatment with morphine leads to enrichment of a side population fraction in MCF-7 cells and the CD44+/CD24(-/low) population in BT549 cells. Con...

BACKGROUND Quercetin, nature's most common flavonoid, possesses anticarcinogenic properties against various forms of cancer. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of quercetin on breast cancer stem cells in the MDA-MB-231 cell line, and to elucidate the possible mechanisms for those effects. MATERIAL AND METHODS We evaluated breast cancer stem cell proliferation, clone generation,...

Here, we developed an isogenic cell model of "stemness" to facilitate protein biomarker discovery in breast cancer. For this purpose, we used knowledge gained previously from the study of the mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV). MMTV initiates mammary tumorigenesis in mice by promoter insertion adjacent to two main integration sites, namely Int-1 (Wnt1) and Int-2 (Fgf3), which ultimately activates...

Breast cancer stem cells (CSCs) are thought to drive recurrence and metastasis. Their identity has been linked to the epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) but remains highly controversial since--depending on the cell-line studied--either epithelial (E) or mesenchymal (M) markers, alone or together have been associated with stemness. Using distinct transcript expression signatures characte...