Publications by authors named "B A Belt"
Background: Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) features highly desmoplastic stroma that promotes structural and functional resistance to therapy. Lysyl oxidases (LOX, LOXL1-4) catalyze collagen cross-linking, thereby increasing stromal rigidity and facilitating therapeutic resistance. Here, we evaluate the role of lysyl oxidases in stromal desmoplasia and the effects of pan-lysyl oxidase (pan-LOX) inhibition in CCA.
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- Researchers have identified distinct subpopulations of cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma using single-cell RNA sequencing, but their clinical importance was uncertain.
- They developed a classifier named DeCAF to classify CAF subtypes based on RNA sequencing data, which has been validated in various cancer types and shown to have unique histological features and prognostic value.
- DeCAF provides a reliable method to understand CAF roles in cancer, assisting in the development of targeted therapies by distinguishing between permissive and restraining CAF subtypes.
Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is a deadly and heterogeneous type of cancer characterized by a spectrum of epidemiologic associations as well as genetic and epigenetic alterations. We seek to understand how these features inter-relate in the earliest phase of cancer development and through the course of disease progression. For this, we studied murine models of liver injury integrating the most commonly occurring gene mutations of CCA - including Kras, Tp53, Arid1a and Smad4 - as well as murine hepatobiliary cancer models and derived primary cell lines based on these mutations.
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