Tumors can undergo long periods of dormancy, with cancer cells entering a largely quiescent, non-proliferative state before reactivation and outgrowth. For a patient, these post-remission tumors are often drug resistant and highly aggressive, resulting in poor prognosis. To understand the role of the extracellular matrix (ECM) in regulating tumor d...
BACKGROUND: Atypical breast hyperplasias (AH) have a 10-year risk of progression to invasive cancer estimated at 4-7%, with the overall risk of developing breast cancer increased by ~ 4-fold. AH lesions are estrogen receptor alpha positive (ERalpha+) and represent risk indicators and/or precursor lesions to low grade ERalpha+ tumors. Therefore, mol...
BECN1 is a haploinsufficient tumor suppressor gene that is monoallelically deleted or epigenetically silenced in many human cancers. In breast cancer, 40% of tumors exhibit monoallelic deletion of Beclin 1. Additionally, low Beclin 1 mRNA expression is observed in aggressive breast cancer subtypes and reduced expression is an independent predictor ...
B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (B-NHL) encompasses multiple clinically and phenotypically distinct subtypes of malignancy with unique molecular etiologies. Common subtypes of B-NHL such as diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) have been comprehensively interrogated at the genomic level, but other less common subtypes such as mantle cell lymphoma (MCL)...
Colorectal cancer is a complex disease driven by well-established mutations such as APC and other yet to be identified pathways. The GTPase Rab11 regulates endosomal protein trafficking and previously we showed that loss of Rab11 caused intestinal inflammation and hyperplasia in mice and flies. To test the idea that loss of Rab11 may promote cancer...
Objective: Better tools are needed for early diagnosis and classification of pancreatic cystic lesions (PCL) to trigger intervention before neoplastic precursor lesions progress to adenocarcinoma. We evaluated the capacity of molecular analysis to improve the accuracy of cytologic diagnosis for PCL with an emphasis on non-diagnostic/negative specim...
Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a reversible cellular process, characterized by changes in gene expression and activation of proteins, favoring the trans-differentiation of the epithelial phenotype to a mesenchymal phenotype. This process increases cell migration and invasion of tumor cells, progression of the cell cycle, and resistance ...
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is an aggressive subtype of liver cancer with few effective treatments and the underlying mechanisms that drive HCC pathogenesis remain poorly characterized. Identifying genes and pathways essential for HCC cell growth will aid the development of new targeted therapies for HCC. Using a kinome CRISPR screen in three hu...
A major obstacle to curing chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is the intrinsic resistance of CML stem cells (CMLSCs) to the drug imatinib mesylate (IM). Prosurvival genes that are preferentially expressed in CMLSCs compared with normal hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) represent potential therapeutic targets for selectively eradicating CMLSCs. However, t...
Mechanisms of lung squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) development are poorly understood. Here, we report that JNK1/2 activities attenuate Lkb1-deficiency-driven LSCC initiation and progression through repressing DeltaNp63 signaling. In vivo Lkb1 ablation alone is sufficient to induce LSCC development by reducing MKK7 levels and JNK1/2 activities, indep...
