A number of studies have implicated a role for the cell surface glycoprotein CD44 in several biologic events, such as lymphopoiesis, homing, lymphocyte activation, and apoptosis. We have earlier reported that signaling via CD44 on naive B cells in addition to B-cell receptor (BCR) and CD40 engagement generated a germinal center-like phenotype. To further characterize the global role of CD44 in ...

CD44 is a cellular protein that has been intensively studied in relation to carcinogenesis over the last decade. It is altered during inflammatory responses and cellular malfunctioning during tumor progression. Tumors of epithelial origin express CD44 in multiple isoforms called variants; some isoforms are related to specific cancer cells. An increase of CD44 specific isoforms is detected in ce...

Soluble CD44 is present in the serum of normal individuals (2.7 +_ 1.1 riM). The concentration of soluble CD44 in the serum is elevated in patients with advanced gastric (24.2 + 9.8 riM) or colon cancer (30.8 411 riM). Serum CD44 concentration correlated with tumor metastasis and tumor burden. Surgical resection of tumors resulted in decreases in serum CD44 levels. By Western blot analysis, mon...

The cell adhesion molecule CD44, which is the major hyaluronan receptor, has been implicated in the binding, endocytosis, and metabolism of hyaluronan. Previous studies have revealed that CD44 plays crucial roles in a variety of inflammatory diseases. In recent years, TLRs, which are ancient microbial pattern recognition receptors, have been shown to initiate an innate immune response and have ...

PURPOSE CD44 is a major hyaluronic acid receptor that exists as a number of isoforms, generated by alternative splicing of 9 "variant" exons in humans (v2 to v10) and 10 exons in rodents. Little is known about the expression and function of CD44 in human retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells. Therefore, the authors determined whether human RPE cells express CD44, and whether the expression dif...

BACKGROUND CD44 is a potentially interesting prognostic marker and therapeutic target in pancreatic cancer. The expression of CD44 has been reported to correlate with poor prognosis of pancreatic cancer in most literatures. The purpose of this study is to investigate the roles of CD44 in pancreatic caner, and their correlation with the prognosis of pancreatic cancer patients. METHODS 67 pancr...

CD44 is expressed by a variety of cells, including glial and T cells. Furthermore, in the demyelinating lesions of multiple sclerosis, CD44 expression is chronically elevated. In this study, we demonstrate that targeted deletion of CD44 attenuated myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein peptide-induced experimental autoimmune encephalitomyelitis (EAE) through novel regulatory mechanisms affecting T...

CD44 is a multifunctional transmembrane protein involved in cell proliferation, angiogenesis, invasion, and metastasis. CD44 is identified as a cancer stem cell marker, and the CD44-positive breast cancer cells are enriched in residual breast cancer cell populations after conventional therapies, suggesting that CD44 may be an important target for cancer prevention and therapy. Therefore, we inv...

BACKGROUND CD44 has long been associated with glioma invasion while, more recently, CD155 has been implicated in playing a similar role. Notably, these two receptors have been shown closely positioned on monocytes. METHODS AND FINDINGS In this study, an up-regulation of CD44 and CD155 was demonstrated in established and early-passage cultures of glioblastoma. Total internal reflected fluoresc...

Lung cancer (LC) with its different subtypes is generally known as a therapy resistant cancer with the highest morbidity rate worldwide. Therapy resistance of a tumor is thought to be related to cancer stem cells (CSCs) within the tumors. There have been indications that the lung cancer is propagated and maintained by a small population of CSCs. To study this question we established a panel of ...