Herein, we review the current findings of how a variety of accessory cells could participate in shaping the tumor microenvironment and supporting the mechanisms by which cancer cells undertake the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). EMT, a complex of phenotypic changes, promotes cancer cell invasion and creates resistance to chemotherapies. Among the accessory cells present in the EMT, imm...

objective: gliomas are the most common primary brain tumors, and have been ranked as the fourth leading cause of cancer death. tumor mesenchymal-like stem cells (tmscs) contribute to the aggressive behavior of glial tumors by providing a favorable microenvironment for the malignant cells. the aims of our study were to identify differential proteome of tmscs derived from low vs. high grade gliom...

When one follows a systematic approach to make a diagnosis of a malignant lesion, it is relatively easy to render a correct cancer diagnosis in most cases during routine daily practice. The first step is to recognize whether or not the specimen contains a lesion and then to determine whether the lesion is neoplastic or non-neoplastic. As a neoplasm is a clonal proliferation, neoplastic conditio...

Gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumors are a group of tumors originated from the mesenchymal stem cells of the gastrointestinal tract, consisting of gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), leiomyomas or leiomyosarcomas or schwannomas. Gastric schwannoma is a very rare gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumor, which represents only 0.2% of all gastric tumors and 4% of all benign gastric neoplasms. We rep...

Although the heterogeneities of epithelial and mesenchymal-transitioned cancer cells are often observed within the tumor microenvironment, the biological significance of the interaction between epithelial cancer cells and mesenchymal-transitioned cancer cells is not yet understood. In this study, we show that the mesenchymal-transitioned cancer cells instigate the invasive ability and metastati...

The Wilms' tumor transcription factor (WT1) was originally classified as a tumor suppressor, but it is now known to also be associated with cancer progression and poor prognosis in several malignancies. WT1 plays an essential role in orchestrating a developmental process known as mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition (MET) during kidney development, but also induces the reverse process, epitheli...