Targeting Cell Polarity Machinery to Exhaust Breast Cancer Stem Cells
Abstract
Cancer stem cells (CSCs), a cell population with acquired perpetuating self-renewal properties which resemble normal stem cells, specifically in the ability to infinitely give rise to the bulk of a tumor as the "seed" of the cancer, account for cancer initiation, progression, recurrence, and chemo-resistance. The cell polarity machinery has been strongly suspected of playing an evolutionarily-conserved role in regulating the cell fate in both normal and neoplastic stem cell populations, which suggests that therapeutic targeting of this mechanism may be an effective strategy for eliminating CSCs and thereby impeding cancer progression and recurrence. During the first grant period, we have successfully completed the proposed studies in Aim1 and have also made significant progress in the ongoing experiments in Aim2. Our results collectively support the hypothesis that PKCzeta is a novel target of microRNA-200c (miR-200c), the most significantly down-regulated miRNA in breast CSCs. Dysregulation of miR200c-PKCzeta signaling is critical for sustaining a self-renewing breast CSC pool and is associated with high-grade aggressive breast cancer. Together, these data point to a great potential for the strategies targeting PKCzeta signaling to exhaust the CSC pool for treatment of breast cancer. The project was not able to be completed during original grant period because the very large datasets generated from the proposed high throughput compound screening experiment in the major task 5 have taken longer than expected to be analyzed and validated, and a no-cost extension has been approved to change the project expiration date to September 29, 2019 that would allow us to conclude all the proposed work, and have the final data incorporated into a manuscript for publication.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2018
- Accession Number
- AD1095905
Entities
People
- Chun-ju Chang
- Meng-ju Wu
- Yingsheng Zhang
Organizations
- Purdue University