Latest Epithelial-mesenchymal transition Stories

Researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida have found that a molecule long believed to be a beneficial tumor suppressor "” and thus a potential cancer drug target "” appears to act as an oncogene in some lethal brain tumors.The protein, epithelial cadherin (E-cadherin), is known for its ability to keep cancer cells glued together, preventing them from breaking away and metastasizing. But, based on their findings, published online in PLoS ONE, the scientists suggest E-cadherin can also function...

Researchers at the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center zero in on how breast tumor cells break free and start to spreadScientists at the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center have identified a key molecular mechanism in breast cancer that enables tumor cells to spread to adjacent or distant parts of the body in a process called metastasis. This finding opens the way to new lines of research aimed at developing treatments for metastatic breast cancer.The research, led by Peter...

Reporting in Nature Cell Biology, researchers describe the discovery of a specific protein called disabled-2 (Dab2) that switches on the process that releases cancer cells from the original tumor and allows the cells to spread and develop into new tumors in other parts of the body.The process called epithelial-mesenchymal transdifferientiation (EMT) has been known to play a role in releasing cells (epithelial cells) on the surface of the solid tumor and transforming them into transient...

Circulating metastatic breast cancer cells can lose their epithelial receptors, a process that enables them to travel through the bloodstream undetected, according to research from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.The findings were presented Dec. 11 at the CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.Levels of these circulating tumor cells (CTCs) - which are shed from a primary tumor or its metastases - have been used to monitor and tailor cancer therapy and to predict a...

Researchers at Rush University Medical Center explain link between alcohol and cancerAlcohol consumption has long been linked to cancer and its spread, but the underlying mechanism has never been clear.Now, researchers at Rush University Medical Center have identified a cellular pathway that may explain the link.In a study published in the current issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, the researchers found that alcohol stimulates what is called the...

    * Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is essential for numerous developmental processes involving biological cells.    * New findings indicate that alcohol may promote cancer progression by stimulating EMT.    * This has implications for both cancer prevention and therapy.Although alcohol consumption has been linked to colon and breast cancer, exactly how this occurs remains unclear. A new study has found that epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) "“...

Patients with positive epithelial-mesenchymal transition markers have lowest survival rateHepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) or primary liver cancer forms in the epithelial tissue of the liver and is most commonly caused by the hepatitis B virus (HBV) or hepatitis C virus (HCV). In the U.S., the National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates that 15,000 men and 6,000 women are diagnosed with HCC each year. Worldwide, HCC accounts for 632,000 cases with the highest regions being Western Pacific and...

Protein allows cells altered by the oncoprotein ErbB2/HER2 to escape their bondsActive, but non-invasive breast cancer is set free to roam as invasive breast cancer when an overexpressed protein converts it to a different cell type, scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report in the Sept. 9 issue of the journal Cancer Cell."We have discovered a key molecular mechanism for the deadly transition of non-invasive breast cancer into invasive disease," said...

By Ramis-Conde, Ignacio Drasdo, Dirk; Anderson, Alexander R A; Chaplain, Mark A J ABSTRACT In this article, we show, using a mathematical multiscale model, how cell adhesion may be regulated by interactions between E-cadherin and beta-catenin and how the control of cell adhesion may be related to cell migration, to the epithelial- mesenchymal transition and to invasion in populations of eukaryotic cells. E-cadherin mediates cell-cell adhesion and plays a critical role in the formation and...

BERKELEY, CA "“ Researchers in the Life Sciences Division of the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have discovered a key molecular pathway by which an enzyme that normally helps remodel tissues initiates the pathway to breast cancer. The same molecular pathway, the researchers found, links both the loss of tissue organization in cancerous organs and the loss of genomic stability in individual cancer cells. "This study demonstrates how structure and function...