cancer stem cells

[Cell Death & Disease] Aberrant expression of paired-related homeobox1 (Prrx1) has been functionally associated with cancer stem cells including glioma stem cells. Prrx1 was found to be markedly upregulated in glioma specimens and elevated Prrx1 expression was inversely correlated with prognosis of glioma patients.

[Cell Death Discovery] Through investigating cellular functions including cell proliferation and stem cell features, it was demonstrated that hypoxic cancer-associated fibroblasts exosomes transferred circHIF1A into breast cancer cells, which played an important role in cancer stem cell properties sponging miR-580-5p by regulating CD44 expression.

[Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy] A library of 17 C1-single and C1/C20-double modified salinomycin analogs was screened to identify compounds with improved activity against breast cancer stem cells.

[Cell Death & Differentiation] By targeting antiapoptotic proteins with specific BH3 mimetics in organoid models of colorectal cancer progression, scientists found that BCL-2 was essential only during instestinal stem cell transformation while MCL1 inhibition did not affect adenoma outgrowth.

[Heliyon] The authors determined differences in ultrastructural morphology, proliferative capacity, and mouse-xenotransplantation characteristics of the MDA-MB-231 and MDA-MB-436 triple-negative breast tumor cell lines with the CD44high/CD24low phenotype in order to study their exosomes.

[Oncogene] Scientists demonstrated that αSMA+ cancer-associated fibroblast in colorectal cancer (CRC) exert tumor-restraining functions via BMP4/TGFβ1 paracrine signaling that served to suppress Lgr5+ CSCs and promoted anti-tumor immunity, ultimately limiting CRC progression.