Identification of Metastatic Tumor Stem Cell
Abstract
Tumor metastasis is an extremely inefficient process and only a fraction of cells in the primary tumor can successfully establish metastatic colonization. These cells by definition have a stem-like ability, but they also need to have an ability of metastasizing to other organs. Therefore, in addition to a tumor stem cell, an existence of a metastatic stem cell is predicted. Despite the critical importance of the concept, this idea has not been rigorously tested due to a lack of an appropriate experimental system. We propose to take an innovative approach to challenge this question by isolating stem cell population from a unique set of breast tumor cell lines and by examining their metastatic behavior in an animal model. The overall objective of our project is to identify metastatic stem cells of breast cancer and define basic characteristics of these cells. To test our hypothesis, we will (i) isolate stem-cell population from non-metastatic and metastatic cells of a pair of syngenic breast tumor cell lines, and test their metastatic ability in an animal model, and (ii) examine their gene expression profiles by microarray analysis and verify the results in tumor stem cells of human breast cancer specimens.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2010
- Accession Number
- ADA554826
Entities
People
- Kounosuke Watabe
Organizations
- Southern Illinois University