ASK1-P38 pathway is important for anoikis induced by microtubule-targeting aryl chloroethylureas.

Purpose: We investigated the involvement of MAPK signaling in the cell death mechanisms of classical microtubule interfering agents (MIA) and aryl-3-(2-chloroethyl)ureas (CEU) acting as antimitotics, along with CEU that don't affect directly microtubules (non-MIA CEU).

Methods: To ascertain the activated signaling pathway profile of MIA and non-MIA CEU, Western blot, immunoprecipitation and transfection experiments were performed.

Results: Non-MIA CEU do not activate p38, as opposed to MIA, and the extent of ERK and JNK activation is lower than in response to MIA.

Analytical performance of a qRT-PCR assay to detect guanylyl cyclase C in FFPE lymph nodes of patients with colon cancer.

Up to 30% of patients with stage II (pN0) colon cancer develop recurrences, suggesting that the presence of lymph node (LN) metastases escaped detection at histopathologic staging. A simple way to overcome this limitation and to improve staging accuracy is to use reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) to examine a larger fraction or an entire specimen. The Guanylyl cyclase C (GCC) gene is uniquely expressed in apical cells of the gastrointestinal tract.

New soft alkylating agents with enhanced cytotoxicity against cancer cells resistant to chemotherapeutics and hypoxia.

Chloroethylureas (CEU) are soft alkylating agents that covalently bind to beta-tubulin (betaTAC) and affect microtubule polymerization dynamics. Herein, we report the identification of a CEU subset and its corresponding oxazolines, which induce cell growth inhibition, apoptosis, and microtubule disruption without alkylating beta-tubulin (N-betaTAC). Both betaTAC and N-betaTAC trigger the collapse of mitochondrial potential (DeltaPsi(m)) and modulate reactive oxygen species levels, following activation of intrinsic caspase-8 and caspase-9.

Microtubule-destabilizing agents induce focal adhesion structure disorganization and anoikis in cancer cells.

Microtubule disruption provokes cytoskeleton and cell adhesion changes whose importance for apoptosis induction remains unclear. The present study focuses on the functional and the molecular adhesion kinetics that are induced by microtubule disruption-mediated apoptosis. We showed that antimicrotubules induce a biphasic sequence of adhesion response that precedes the onset of apoptosis and focal adhesion kinase hydrolysis.

Antiangiogenic and antitumoral activity of phenyl-3-(2-chloroethyl)ureas: a class of soft alkylating agents disrupting microtubules that are unaffected by cell adhesion-mediated drug resistance.

The development of new anticancer agents with lower toxicity, higher therapeutic index, and weaker tendency to induce resistant phenotypes in tumor cells is a continuous challenge for the scientific community. Toward that end, we showed previously that a new class of soft alkylating agents designed as phenyl-3-(2-chloroethyl)ureas (CEUs) inhibits tumor cell growth in vitro and that their efficiency is not altered by clinically relevant mechanisms of resistance such as overexpression of multidrug resistance proteins, increase in intracellular concentration of glutathione and/or glutathione S-transferase activity, alteration of topoisomerase II, and increased DNA repair. Mechanistic studies have showed recently that the cytotoxic activity of several CEUs was mainly related to the disruption of microtubules.

c-Myc potentiates the mitochondrial pathway of apoptosis by acting upstream of apoptosis signal-regulating kinase 1 (Ask1) in the p38 signalling cascade.

Cell transformation by growth-promoting oncoproteins renders cells extremely sensitive to apoptosis through an unknown mechanism affecting the mitochondrial pathway of apoptosis. We have shown previously that sensitization to apoptosis also correlated with the activation of the stress-activated protein kinase p38. In the present study, we investigated the role of p38 in c-Myc-dependent apoptosis induced by the anticancer agent cisplatin.