Project description:Stromal communication with cancer cells can influence treatment response. We show that stromal and breast cancer (BrCa) cells utilize paracrine and juxtacrine signaling to drive chemotherapy and radiation resistance. Upon heterotypic interaction, exosomes are transferred from stromal to BrCa cells. RNA within exosomes, which are largely non-coding transcripts and transposable elements, stimulates the pattern recognition receptor RIG-I to activate STAT1-dependent anti-viral signaling. In parallel, stromal cells also activate NOTCH3 on BrCa cells. The paracrine anti-viral and juxtacrine NOTCH3 pathways converge as STAT1 facilitates transcriptional responses to NOTCH3 and expands therapy resistant tumor-initiating cells. Primary human and/or mouse BrCa analysis support the role of anti-viral/NOTCH3 pathways in NOTCH signaling and stroma-mediated resistance, which is abrogated by combination therapy with gamma secretase inhibitors. Thus, stromal cells orchestrate an intricate cross-talk with BrCa cells by utilizing exosomes to instigate anti-viral signaling. This expands BrCa subpopulations adept at resisting therapy and re-initiating tumor growth. Breast cancer cells lines and MRC5 fibroblasts were mono-cultured or co-cultured together. Cell types were separated by FACS and gene expression changes were examined using the Affymetrix Human Gene 1.0ST arrays. The effect of tumor-stromal cell interaction on different breast cancer cell types was analyzed using biological replicates. Gene expression changes resulting from knockdown of STAT1 was also investigated.
Project description:Stromal communication with cancer cells can influence treatment response. We show that stromal and breast cancer (BrCa) cells utilize paracrine and juxtacrine signaling to drive chemotherapy and radiation resistance. Upon heterotypic interaction, exosomes are transferred from stromal to BrCa cells. RNA within exosomes, which are largely non-coding transcripts and transposable elements, stimulates the pattern recognition receptor RIG-I to activate STAT1-dependent anti-viral signaling. In parallel, stromal cells also activate NOTCH3 on BrCa cells. The paracrine anti-viral and juxtacrine NOTCH3 pathways converge as STAT1 facilitates transcriptional responses to NOTCH3 and expands therapy resistant tumor-initiating cells. Primary human and/or mouse BrCa analysis support the role of anti-viral/NOTCH3 pathways in NOTCH signaling and stroma-mediated resistance, which is abrogated by combination therapy with gamma secretase inhibitors. Thus, stromal cells orchestrate an intricate cross-talk with BrCa cells by utilizing exosomes to instigate anti-viral signaling. This expands BrCa subpopulations adept at resisting therapy and re-initiating tumor growth. Breast cancer cells lines and MRC5 fibroblasts were mono-cultured or co-cultured together. Cell types were separated by FACS and gene expression changes were examined using the Affymetrix Human Gene 1.0ST arrays. The effect of tumor-stromal cell interaction on different breast cancer cell types was analyzed using biological replicates. Gene expression changes resulting from knockdown of STAT1 was also investigated.
Project description:Analysis of differentially expressed genes from dissected whole tissue and laser capture microdissected colorectal cancer tissue samples The analysis, in colorectal cancer tissues, of compartmental and whole tissue expression profiles as well as the significantly active pathways that were differentially deregulated between the epithelial and stromal compartments when compared alongside that of whole tissue dissection Comparison of tumor epithelium vs normal epithelium; tumor stroma vs normal stroma and tumor whole tissue vs normal whole tissue
Project description:Gene Expression Profiling of Breast Cancer Patients with Brain Metastases Brain metastases confer the worst prognosis of breast cancer as no therapy exists that prevents or eliminates the cancer from spreading to the brain. We developed a new computational modeling method to derive specific downstream signaling pathways that reveal unknown target-disease connections and new mechanisms for specific cancer subtypes. The model enables us to reposition drugs based on available gene expression data of patients. We applied this model to repurpose known or shelved drugs for brain, lung, and bone metastases of breast cancer with the hypothesis that cancer subtypes have their own specific signaling mechanisms. To test the hypothesis, we addressed the specific CSBs for each metastasis that satisfy that (1) CSB proteins are activated by the maximal number of enriched signaling pathways specific to this metastasis, and (2) CSB proteins involve in the most differential expressed coding-genes specific to the specific breast cancer metastasis. The identified signaling networks for the three types of metastases contain 31, 15, and 18 proteins, respectively, and are used to reposition 15, 9, and 2 drug candidates for the brain, lung, and bone metastases of breast cancer. We performed in vitro and in vivo preclinical experiments as well as analysis on patient tumor specimens to evaluate the targets and repositioned drugs. Two known drugs, Sunitinib (FDA approved for renal cell carcinoma and imatinib-resistant gastrointestinal stromal tumor) and Dasatinib (FDA approved for chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) after imatinib treatment and Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia), were shown to prohibit the metastatic colonization in brain. The TMH-52 cohort includes 11 patients who were examined with brain metastasis at the time of breast cancer diagnosis. The other 41 patients were examined with other organ metastasis at the time of breast cancer diagnosis.
Project description:Analysis of differentially expressed genes from dissected whole tissue and laser capture microdissected colorectal cancer tissue samples The analysis, in colorectal cancer tissues, of compartmental and whole tissue expression profiles as well as the significantly active pathways that were differentially deregulated between the epithelial and stromal compartments when compared alongside that of whole tissue dissection