0000000000544683
AUTHOR
Cristóbal Aguilar-gallardo
EpCAM duality becomes this molecule in a new Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tale.
EpCAM, known as an epithelial cell adhesion molecule, plays an essential role in cell adhesion, migration, metastasis and cell signalling. Rather than acting as an apoptosis antagonist, it induces cellular proliferation that impacts the cell cycle, and as a signalling transducer it uses and enhances the Wnt pathway, which is significantly relevant in cell renewal and cancer. EpCAM has become a marker of circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in lung cancer due to its specificity, and its high and stable expression level. Recent findings have allowed us to relearn and discover EpCAM again as a CSCs marker by demonstrating its role in human epithelial cancer progression. In line with this, the focus…
New insights in non-small-cell lung cancer: circulating tumor cells and cell-free DNA
Lung cancer is the second most frequent tumor and the leading cause of death by cancer in both men and women. Increasing knowledge about the cancer genome and tumor environment has led to a new setting in which morphological and molecular characterization is needed to treat patients in the most personalized way in order to achieve better outcomes. Since tumor products can be detected in body fluids, the liquid biopsy, particularly, peripheral blood, has emerged as a new source for lung cancer biomarker's analysis. A variety of tumor components can be used for this purpose. Among them, circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) should be especially considered. Different…
New generation of cancer stem cells inhibitors in non-small cell lung cancer.
e20545Background: Lung cancer is the commonest tumor worldwide of which the most frequent type is non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) that represents a large proportion of cancer deaths and is chara...
Abstract 3056: Lung tumor spheres as in vitro platform for testing new therapeutic strategies against cancer stem cells
Abstract Background: Treatment resistance is related to cancer stem cells (CSCs), a highly tumorigenic subpopulation of cells capable of growing and forming tumor spheres under non-adherent conditions. This study aimed to isolate and characterise CSCs from resected non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients' tumor-tissue and cell lines like tumor spheres and to use them as an in vitro platform for drug screening. Methods: The study was performed on tumour cells from 8 resected NSCLC patients and 12 NSCLC cell lines grown in monolayer and as spheres. The expression of 60 genes, including CSC-markers, pluripotency inducers, cell cycle regulators and components of the Notch, Wnt and Hedgehog …
Adoptive transfer of ex vivo expanded SARS‐CoV‐2‐specific cytotoxic lymphocytes: A viable strategy for COVID‐19 immunosuppressed patients?
Cellular and humoral response to acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) infections is on focus of research. We evaluate herein the feasibility of expanding virus‐specific T cells (VST) against SARS‐CoV‐2 ex vivo through a standard protocol proven effective for other viruses. The experiment was performed in three different donors' scenarios: (a) SARS‐CoV‐2 asymptomatic infection/negative serology, (b) SARS‐CoV‐2 symptomatic infection/positive serology, and (c) no history of SARS‐CoV‐2 infection/negative serology. We were able to obtain an expanded VST product from donors 1 and 2 (1.6x and 1.8x increase of baseline VST count, respectively) consisting in CD3 + cells (80.3% and 6…
A gene expression signature to characterize human lung adenocarcinoma cancer stem cells.
e20547Background: Treatment resistance is linked to cancer stem cells (CSCs), a highly tumorigenic subpopulation of cells with the ability to grow as spheres in non-adherent conditions. The aim of ...