Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are a highly tumorigenic subpopulation of the cancer cells within a tumor that drive tumor initiation, progression, and therapy resistance. In general, stem cell niche provides a specific microenvironment in which stem cells are present in an undifferentiated and self-renewable state. CSC niche is a specialized tumor microenvironment for CSCs which provides cues for their maintenance and propagation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFukuyama congenital muscular dystrophy (FCMD) is an autosomal recessive disorder caused by fukutin (FKTN) gene mutations. FCMD is the second most common form of childhood muscular dystrophy in Japan, and the most patients possess a homozygous retrotransposal SINE-VNTR-Alu insertion in the 3'-untranslated region of FKTN. A deep-intronic variant (DIV) was previously identified as the second most prevalent loss-of-function mutation in Japanese patients with FCMD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdipose tissue is a component of the tumor microenvironment and is involved in tumor progression. We have previously shown that adipokine adipsin (CFD) functions as an enhancer of tumor proliferation and cancer stem cell (CSC) properties in breast cancers. We established the Cfd-knockout (KO) mice and the mammary adipose tissue-derived stem cells (mADSCs) from them.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe have previously identified receptor tyrosine kinase-like orphan receptor 1 (ROR1) as a direct transcriptional target of TTF-1/NKX2-1, a lineage-survival oncogene in lung adenocarcinoma. ROR1 sustains prosurvival signaling from multiple receptor tyrosine kinases including epidermal growth factor receptor, MET, and insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor in part by maintaining the caveolae structure as a scaffold protein of cavin-1 and caveolin-1. In this study, a high throughput screening of the natural product library containing 2560 compounds was undertaken using a cell-based FluoPPI assay detecting ROR1-cavin-1 interaction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn Vitro Cell Dev Biol Anim
December 2020
Some miRNAs, including the miR-302 cluster, are critical regulators of the stemness state of embryonic stem cells and cell fate patterning. In this study, we evaluated the activity of the miR-302 core promotor in mice and human pluripotent stem cells, somatic tissue derivatives, and generated transgenic mice expressing EGFP under a miR-302 promoter. The expression of EGFP under the control of the miR-302 promotor was examined in the cell lines and somatic tissues of transgenic mice, transgenic blastocysts, and embryonic stem cells derived from transgenic blastocysts.
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