Project description:Well-differentiated tumours (WDT) of the thyroid gland can be difficult to diagnose. Focal nuclear clearing can be suggestive of a papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), while questionable vascular or capsular penetration may raise the possibility of diagnosis of a follicular thyroid carcinoma (FTC). The recently proposed term “thyroid tumours of uncertain malignant potential” (TT-UMP) defines cases showing inconclusive morphological evidence of malignancy. We use microRNA (miRNA) expression profiling to analyze 42 well differentiated thyroid tumours including 7 follicular tumours of uncertain malignant potential (FT-UMP), 6 well differentiated tumours of uncertain malignant potential (WDT-UMP), 7 follicular thyroid adenomas (FTA), 5 follicular variant of papillary thyroid carcinoma (FV-PTC) 6 follicular thyroid carcinoma (FTC), and 11 conventional papillary thyroid carcinoma (C-PTC) with 6 C-PTC mutated for BRAFV600E (C-PTC-mut) and 5 not mutated: wild type (C-PTC-wt). Comparison of these 13 tumours of uncertain malignant potential (7 FT-UMP and 6 WDT-UMP) with those obtained from 16 PTC (11 C-PTC and 5 FV-PTC), 6 FTC and 7 FTA is performed in order to clarify the relationships between TT-UMP and the morphologically well characterized categories of thyroid tumours (i.e. C-PTC, FV-PTC, FTC and FTA). In first, each pathological sample (“L” for Lesional tissue) is compared with its matched control (“S” for Safe tissue) for the 42 patients (84 miRNA microarray slides). This control was taken from the same patient at a large distance from the tumour. Secondly, the perilesional tissue from the same patients but 2 (1 PTC and 1 adenoma, without enough RNA left) is compared to normal thyroid tissue (safe tissue reference) obtained from a patient who underwent total thyroidectomy for a laryngeal carcinoma that partially invaded the thyroid gland, to search for microRNA signatures of perilesional tissues (80 miRNA microarray slides).Experiments is performed with a miRNA microarray, referenced in GEO under the accession number GPL4717 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GPL4717). 42 Patients: 7 FT-UMP, 6 WDT-UMP, 7 FTA (+1 duplicate sample), 5 FV-PTC, 6 FTC (+ 2 duplicate samples), and 11 C-PTC. 44 dye-swap pairs and 1 with no dye swap pair for a total of 89 samples.
Project description:Corneal epithelial stem cells reside in the limbus that is the transitional zone between the cornea and conjunctiva, and are essential to maintain the homeostasis of corneal epithelium. However, their characterization is poorly understood. Therefore, we constructed gene expression profiles of limbal epithelial SP and non-SP cell using RNA-sequencing. As a result, limbal epithelial SP cells have immature cell phenotypes with endothelial/mesenchymal cell markers, while limbal epithelial non-SP cells have epithelial progenitor cell markers.
Project description:Targeted therapies against cancer stem cells which are enriched in side populations (SP) involves interruption of Wnt-signalling. Furthermore, EpCAM is a SP marker and modulator of Wnt-signalling. Therefore, the effects of an anti-EpCAM treatment on SP-cells and WNT/β-catenin signalling was studied. SP of the human lung adenocarcinoma cell line A549 was obtained by fluorescence activated cell sorting and whole genome scans helped to define their molecular phenotype after anti-EpCAM antibody treatment.