Browsing by Subject "Chemotactic factors"

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    The effect of marrow secretome and culture environment on the rate of metastatic breast cancer cell migration in two and three dimensions
    (American Society for Cell Biology, 2021-05) Curtis, Kimberly J.; Mai, Christine; Martin, Hannah; Oberman, Alyssa G.; Alderfer, Laura; Romero-Moreno, Ricardo; Walsh, Mark; Mitros, Stephen F.; Thomas, Scott G.; Dynako, Joseph A.; Zimmer, David I.; McNamara, Laoise M.; Littlepage, Laurie E.; Niebur, Glen L.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Metastasis is responsible for over 90% of cancer-related deaths, and bone is the most common site for breast cancer metastasis. Metastatic breast cancer cells home to trabecular bone, which contains hematopoietic and stromal lineage cells in the marrow. As such, it is crucial to understand whether bone or marrow cells enhance breast cancer cell migration toward the tissue. To this end, we quantified the migration of MDA-MB-231 cells toward human bone in two- and three-dimensional (3D) environments. First, we found that the cancer cells cultured on tissue culture plastic migrated toward intact trabecular bone explants at a higher rate than toward marrow-deficient bone or devitalized bone. Leptin was more abundant in conditioned media from the cocultures with intact explants, while higher levels of IL-1β, IL-6, and TNFα were detected in cultures with both intact bone and cancer cells. We further verified that the cancer cells migrated into bone marrow using a bioreactor culture system. Finally, we studied migration toward bone in 3D gelatin. Migration speed did not depend on stiffness of this homogeneous gel, but many more dendritic-shaped cancer cells oriented and migrated toward bone in stiffer gels than softer gels, suggesting a coupling between matrix mechanics and chemotactic signals.
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    Harnessing tumorous flaws for immune supremacy: is miRNA-155 the weak link in breast cancer progression?
    (The American Society for Clinical Investigation, 2022-10-03) Sharma, Samantha; Opyrchal, Mateusz; Lu, Xiongbin; Medical and Molecular Genetics, School of Medicine
    With the advent of immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy, treatment strategies for late-stage cancers have seen a radical advancement. In this issue of the JCI, Wang et al. characterize the functional role of miR-155 in breast cancer and its potential in harnessing the efficacy of immunotherapy. The study reports that high expression levels of miR-155 in breast cancer cells downregulated suppressor of cytokine signaling 1 (SOCS1), increased the phosphorylated STAT1 (pSTAT1)/pSTAT3 ratio, and thereby stimulated chemoattractants for tumor infiltration of effector T cells. Moreover, miR-155 overexpression set the stage for ICB therapy via increased programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression on cancer cells and enhanced immunological memory response via the release of miR-155-containing extracellular vesicles. Collectively, these data suggest that miR-155 is a strong candidate as a prognostic biomarker for ICB therapy.