A priori, a common receptor induced in tumor microvessels, cancer cells and cancer stem-like cells (CSCs) that is involved in tumor angiogenesis, invasiveness, and CSC anoikis resistance and survival, could underlie contemporaneous coordination of these events rather than assume stochasticity. Here we show that functional analysis of the dual endothelin1/VEGFsignal peptide receptor, DEspR, (for...

OBJECTIVE Early metastasis is a major biological feature of pancreatic cancer. The current study examined whether silencing Slc38a1, a gene involved in energy metabolism, using short hairpin RNA (shRNA) could inhibit the growth, migration, and invasiveness of pancreatic cancer cells. METHODS A series of Slc38a1 shRNAs were designed and cloned into the pGPU6/GFP/Neo vectors. An shRNA with the ...

Recently, de4 EGFR, a variant of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) with exon 4 deletion, was identified in glioblastoma and ovarian cancer. However, its biological function on ovarian cancer is still not clear. In this study, the expression profile of de4 EGFR and its contribution to epithelial ovarian cancer cells proliferation, invasiveness and drug resistance were studied. Our results ...

The role of c-Crk (CRK) in promoting metastasis is well described however the role of CRK phosphorylation and the corresponding signaling events are not well explained. We have observed CRK-II serine 41 phosphorylation is inversely correlated with p120-catenin and E-cadherin expressions in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells. Therefore, we investigated the role of CRK-II serine 41 phosphor...

Proteases are crucial for the spread of cancer cells from a primary tumor to the site of secondary growth. This study examined the ability of IFNÁ and TNF· to stimulate a better invasiveness in B16 murine melanoma cells, and investigated whether this enhanced ability was related to a higher expression of protease activities, such as urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) and its receptor (uPAR),...

A significant proportion of prostate cancer patients treated with curative intent develop advanced disease. At a fundamental biological level, very little is known about what makes the disease aggressive and metastatic. Observational pathology reports and experimental data suggest that an epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is involved in prostate cancer invasiveness. The mechanism by which...

Migration and invasiveness are phenotypic characteristics of cells that contribute to physiological processes, such as wound healing or embryogenesis and they are involved in serious pathological processes, namely in tumor cell metastasis. Availability of methods for studying migration and invasiveness of the cells is important for understanding molecular basis of these processes. In the case o...

Up-regulation of extracellular-regulated kinases 1/2 (ERK1/2) has been implicated in tumor progression and metastasis in many types of cancer. We have previously shown that ERK1/2 is necessary for invasiveness of Dunning rat prostatic adenocarcinoma cell lines in which levels of activated ERK1/2 correlate with the metastatic potential. Here, we further examined the biological effects of elevate...

PURPOSE Matrix metalloproteinases (MMP) promote tumor invasion and alter microenvironment. MMP levels are elevated in bladder cancer patients correlating with more advanced stage. We tested whether polymorphisms in MMP genes modify the risk of bladder cancer invasiveness and whether smoke exposure modifies this risk. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN Using a case-only study, we examined the association of ...

Side population (SP) cells are an enriched population of stem, and the existence of SP cells has been reported in human cancer cell lines. In this study, we performed an SP analysis using 11 human cancer cell lines and confirmed the presence of SP cells in an embryonic carcinoma cell line, NEC8. NEC8 SP cells showed characteristics of cancer stem cells, such as high growth rate, chemoresistance...