Publications by authors named "Tuende Buknicz"

Article Synopsis
  • Micro-environmental factors like stromal and immune cells, along with hormones, significantly influence the progression of melanoma.
  • A study with 89 melanoma patients revealed a notable link between elevated gastrin levels and increased melanoma thickness and metastasis, suggesting higher cancer progression risks.
  • Gastrin was shown to promote melanoma cell migration and invasion through CCK2 receptors, with interactions in the tumor environment potentially exacerbating these effects, especially when combined with dermal fibroblasts/myofibroblasts.
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Melanoma often recurs in patients after the removal of the primary tumor, suggesting the presence of recurrent tumor-initiating cells that are undetectable using standard diagnostic methods. As cell fusion has been implicated to facilitate the alteration of a cell's phenotype, we hypothesized that cells in the peritumoral stroma having a stromal phenotype that initiate recurrent tumors might originate from the fusion of tumor and stromal cells. Here, we show that in patients with BRAF(V600E) melanoma, melanoma antigen recognized by T-cells (MART1)-negative peritumoral stromal cells express BRAF(V600E) protein.

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After the removal of primary cutaneous melanoma some patients develop local recurrences, even after having histologically tumor-free re-excision. A potential explanation behind this phenomenon is that tumor cells switch their phenotype, making their recognition via standard histopathological assessments extremely difficult. Tumor-stromal cell fusion has been proposed as a potential mechanism for tumor cells to acquire mesenchymal traits; therefore, we hypothesized that melanoma cells could acquire fibroblast- and macrophage-like phenotypes via cell fusion.

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