Loco-regional recurrence or distant metastasis usually leads to the death of patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). Whether or not circulating epithelial cells (CECs) count is a valuable marker in monitoring the therapeutic outcome of PTC was investigated. Patients with PTC (n=129) were treated in our medical center and were categorized into 4 groups with excellent (n=45), biochemical...

BACKGOUND Alveolar type 2 (AT2) cells play important roles in maintaining adult lung homeostasis. AT2 cells isolated from the lung have revealed the cell-specific functions of AT2 cells. Comprehensive molecular and transcriptional profiling of purified AT2 cells would be helpful for elucidating the underlying mechanisms of their cell-specific functions. To enable the further purification of AT2...

PURPOSE Designed ankyrin repeat proteins (DARPins) hold great promise as a new class of binding molecules to overcome the limitations of antibodies for biomedical applications. Here, we assessed the potential of an epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM)-specific DARPin (Ec4) for tumor targeting as a fusion toxin with Pseudomonas aeruginosa exotoxin A. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN DARPin Ec4 was gen...

peritoneal recurrence of gastric cancer patients is a serious problem. recently, the cD44 molecule was reported to be a marker of cancer stem cells in gastric cancer. In this study, we examined the prognostic significance of cD44 mrnA levels in magnetically separated cD45-negative epcAM-positive (cD45-epcAM+) cells, in the peritoneal washes collected from gastric cancer patients with tnM stage ...

The epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) is overexpressed in a wide variety of human cancers and is associated with patient prognosis, including those with lung cancer. However, the association of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the EpCAM gene with the prognosis for non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients has never been investigated. We evaluated the association between two S...

Differentiation of cancer stem cells (CSCs) into cancer cells causes increased sensitivity to chemotherapeutic agents. Although inhibition of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) leads to CSC survival, the effect of branched chain amino acids (BCAAs), an mTOR complex 1 (mTORC1) activator remains unknown. In this study, we examined the effects of BCAA on hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells expr...

Angiogenesis is vitally important in diabetic wound healing. We had previously demonstrated that a Chinese 2-herb formula (NF3) significantly stimulated angiogenesis of HUVEC in wound healing. However, the molecular mechanism has not yet been elucidated. In line with this, global expression profiling of NF3-treated HUVEC was performed so as to assess the regulatory role of NF3 involved in the u...

We previously identified a gene signature predicted to regulate the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in both epithelial tissue stem cells and breast cancer cells. A phenotypic RNA interference (RNAi) screen identified the genes within this 140-gene signature that promoted the conversion of mesenchymal epithelial cell adhesion molecule-negative (EpCAM-) breast cancer cells to an epithelia...

We investigated whether Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) isolated from epithelial tumors could survive and grow in xenotransplants. To this purpose, EpCAM-positive CTCs were enriched by CellSearch platform the only FDA-cleared automated platform that quantifies tumor burden in peripheral blood and provides clinical evidence of predictive and prognostic value. The CTCs were isolated from metastati...

The epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) is a type I glycoprotein located on the surface of epithelial cells. It is strongly expressed in many neoplasms and already used in the diagnosis and distinction of various tumour subtypes. Comparative studies about EpCAM expression in cystic sellar lesions are lacking. Therefore, we analysed its distribution pattern in adamantinomatous (aCP) and pa...