Hypoxia regulates SOX2 expression to promote prostate cancer cell invasion and sphere formation.

SOX2 is an embryonic stem cell marker that in prostate cancer has been associated not only with tumorigenesis but also metastasis. Furthermore hypoxia in primary tumors has been linked to poor prognosis and outcomes in this disease. The goal of the present study was to investigate the impact of hypoxia on SOX2 expression and metastasis-associated functions in prostate cancer cells.

Conditional deletion of Jak2 reveals an essential role in hematopoiesis throughout mouse ontogeny: implications for Jak2 inhibition in humans.

Germline deletion of Jak2 in mice results in embryonic lethality at E12.5 due to impaired hematopoiesis. However, the role that Jak2 might play in late gestation and postnatal life is unknown.

Cell-based selection provides novel molecular probes for cancer stem cells.

Cancer stem cells (CSC) represent a malignant subpopulation of cells in hierarchically organized tumors. They constitute a subpopulation of malignant cells within a tumor mass and possess the ability to self-renew giving rise to heterogeneous tumor cell populations with a complex set of differentiated tumor cells. CSC may be the cause of metastasis and therapeutic refractory disease.

Impact of the small molecule Met inhibitor BMS-777607 on the metastatic process in a rodent tumor model with constitutive c-Met activation.

c-Met tyrosine kinase hyperactivation is strongly associated with tumor metastasis. In a prior study we showed that BMS-777607, a novel selective small molecule Met kinase inhibitor, potently suppressed ligand-mediated functions in prostate cancer cells. Herein we evaluated the impact of this agent on the potential of the highly metastatic murine KHT sarcoma that carries constitutive activated c-Met.

E-cadherin plasticity in prostate cancer stem cell invasion.

Prostate cancer that has progressed to metastatic disease remains largely untreatable. Nearly 90% of patients with advanced prostate cancer develop skeletal metastases, resulting in a substantial reduction in the quality of life and a drastic worsening of patient prognosis. The mechanisms involved in prostate cancer cell dissemination, however, remain poorly understood.

Impact of hypoxia on the metastatic potential of human prostate cancer cells.

Purpose: Intratumoral hypoxia is known to be associated with radioresistance and metastasis. The present study examined the effect of acute and chronic hypoxia on the metastatic potential of prostate cancer PC-3, DU145, and LNCaP cells.

Methods And Materials: Cell proliferation and clonogenicity were tested by MTT assay and colony formation assay, respectively.

Expression of pluripotent stem cell reprogramming factors by prostate tumor initiating cells.

Purpose: We identified a discrete population of stem cell-like tumor cells expressing 5 essential transcription factors required to reprogram pluripotency in prostate tumor cell lines and primary prostate cancer tissue.

Materials And Methods: DU145 and PC3 human prostate cancer cell lines (ATCC), tumor tissue from patients with prostate cancer and normal prostate tissue were evaluated for the reprogramming factors OCT3/4 (Cell Signaling Technology), SOX2, Klf4 (Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Santa Cruz, California), Nanog (BioLegend) and c-Myc (Cell Signaling) by semiquantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction, histological and immunohistochemical analysis. Stem cell-like tumor cells were enriched by flow cytometric cell sorting using E-cadherin (R&D Systems) as a surface marker, and soft agar, spheroid and tumorigenicity assays to confirm cancer stem cell-like characteristics.

Differentiation of human embryonic stem cells into immunostimulatory dendritic cells under feeder-free culture conditions.

Purpose: The objective of this study was to develop a scalable and broadly applicable active immunotherapy approach against cancer, circumventing the limitations typically encountered with autologous vaccination strategies. We hypothesized that human embryonic stem cells (hESC) can serve as a virtually unlimited source for generating dendritic cells (DC) with potent antigen-presenting function. Here, we investigated the developmental processes and requirements for generating large numbers of mature, antigen-presenting DC from pluripotent hESC.

Protein kinase C epsilon is overexpressed in primary human non-small cell lung cancers and functionally required for proliferation of non-small cell lung cancer cells in a p21/Cip1-dependent manner.

The protein kinase C (PKC) family of proteins plays important roles in growth regulation and is implicated in tumorigenesis. It has become clear that the role of PKC in tumorigenesis is cell context dependent and/or isoform specific. In this study, we showed for the first time by immunohistochemistry that overexpression of PKC epsilon was detected in the vast majority (>90%) of primary human non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) compared with normal lung epithelium.

Use of SSR markers to complement tests of distinctiveness, uniformity, and stability (DUS) of pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) varieties.

This study was carried out to assess the potential of SSR markers for variety identification by comparing SSR markers and morphological traits in tests of distinctiveness, uniformity, and stability (DUS) of pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) varieties. Twenty-seven SSR markers were polymorphic in 66 pepper varieties, revealing a total of 89 alleles.