Cancer

Glioblastomas (high-grade astrocytomas) are highly aggressive brain tumors with poor prognosis and limited treatment options. In the present studies, we have defined the role of fetuin-A, a liver-derived multifunctional serum protein, in the growth of an established glioblastoma cell line, LN229. We hereby demonstrate that these cells synthesize ectopic fetuin-A which supports their growth in culture in the absence of serum.

Overexpression of mutant p53 is a common finding in most cancers but testicular tumours accumulate wild-type p53 (wtp53). In contrast to the accepted concept that p53 homozygous mutant mice do not accumulate mutant p53 in normal cells, our study on a mutant p53 mouse model of Li-Fraumeni syndrome harbouring the hot-spot p53R172H mutation described an elevated level of mutant p53 in non-cancerous mouse tissues.

The mammary gland is composed of a complex cellular hierarchy with unusual postnatal plasticity. The identities of stem/progenitor cell populations, as well as tumour-initiating cells that give rise to breast cancer, are incompletely understood. Here we show that Lgr6 marks rare populations of cells in both basal and luminal mammary gland compartments in mice.

Treatment with androgen-targeted therapies can induce upregulation of epithelial plasticity pathways. Epithelial plasticity is known to be important for metastatic dissemination and therapeutic resistance. The goal of this study is to elucidate the functional consequence of induced epithelial plasticity on AR regulation during disease progression to identify factors important for treatment-resistant and metastatic prostate cancer.

Bone metastasis is a lethal and incurable disease. It is the result of the dissemination of cancer cells to the bone marrow. Due to the difficulty in sampling and detection, few techniques exist to efficiently and consistently detect and quantify disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) in the bone marrow of cancer patients. Because mouse models represent a crucial tool with which to study cancer metastasis, we developed a novel method for the simple selection-free detection and quantification of bone marrow DTCs in mice.

Human CUB and Sushi multiple domains 1 (CSMD1) is a membrane-bound complement inhibitor suggested to act as a putative tumor suppressor gene, since allelic loss of this region encompassing 8p23 including CSMD1 characterizes various malignancies. Here, we assessed the role of CSMD1 as a tumor suppressor gene in the development of breast cancer in vitro and in vivo. We found that human breast tumor tissues expressed CSMD1 at lower levels compared to that in normal mammary tissues. The decreased expression of CSMD1 was linked to a shorter overall survival of breast cancer patients.