The latent membrane protein-1 (LMP1) encoded by Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is an oncoprotein which acts by constitutive activation of various signalling pathways, including NF-kappaB. In so doing it leads to deregulated cell growth intrinsic to the cancer cell as well as having extrinsic affects upon the tumour microenvironment. These properties ...

BACKGROUND: Most individuals who died of trauma were found to harbour microscopic primary cancers at autopsies. Surgical excision of the primary tumour, unfortunately, seems to disturb tumour dormancy in over half of all metastatic relapses. PRESENTATION OF THE HYPOTHESIS: A recently developed immune model suggested that the evolutionary pressure driving ...

The constitutive overexpression of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) is frequently observed in malignant tumours. In particular, MMP-2 and MMP-9 have been reported to be closely associated with invasion and angiogenesis in malignant gliomas. Our study aimed to evaluate the antitumour effects of MMI-166 (Nalpha-[4-(2-Phenyl-2H- tetrazole-5-yl) phenyl sulfonyl]-D-tryptophan), a third generation MMP ...

Activation of developmental pathways has been recognized as a key mechanism for tumourigenesis and, hence, might be a valuable target for otherwise difficult to treat tumour entities such as biliary tract cancer (BTC). Therefore, we performed a comprehensive analysis of the Wnt signalling pathway in 9 BTC cell lines on ...

Gliomas are the most common type of primary brain tumours, and in this group glioblastomas (GBMs) are the higher-grade gliomas with fast progression and unfortunate prognosis. Two major aspects of glioma biology that contributes to its awful prognosis are the formation of new blood vessels through the process of angiogenesis ...

The chick chorio-allantoic membrane (CAM) assay is a commonly used method for studying angiogenic or anti-angiogenic activities in vivo. The ease of access allows direct monitoring of tumour growth by biomicroscopy and the possibility to screen many samples in an inexpensive way. The CAM model provides a powerful tool to ...

Although cell encapsulation technologies were originally developed for the treatment of acquired and genetic diseases such as diabetes, they can also be applied to the treatment of a variety of solid tumours. There are a number of strategies aimed at treating tumours with encapsulated cells and most of these are ...

BACKGROUND: GOLPH2 (Golgi phosphoprotein 2) is a novel Golgi membrane protein. Despite its unknown physiologic function, however, it has been proposed as a biomarker for hepatocellular and prostate carcinoma due to its upregulation in those cancer entities. Whether the overexpression of GOLPH2 is tumour specific or a generic parameter of ...

In previous reports, laboratory-made lysolecithin-containing thermosensitive liposome encapsulating doxorubicin (LTSL-DOX) showed potent anticancer effects in FaDu human squamous cell carcinoma. To further study the spectrum of LTSL-DOX activity, the efficacy of its commercial formulation was re-examined in FaDu and compared in HCT116, PC3, SKOV-3 and 4T07 cancer cell lines. Factors ...

The aim was to prepare novel Ganoderma lucidum polysaccharide nanoparticles and to evaluate the physicochemical properties and anti-tumour activity in in-vitro cytotoxicity studies using HepG2, HeLa and A549 cancer cell lines, and growth promotion effects on mouse spleen cells. Chitosan nanoparticles loaded with G. lucidum polysaccharide were prepared using the ...

Squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) are highly invasive tumours with frequent local and distant recurrence. Metastasis formation requires degradation of the extracellular matrix, which is fulfilled by membrane-associated proteases such as the urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA). WX-UK1 is a competitive active site inhibitor of the protease ...

Invasiveness and metastasis are the most common characteristics of non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and causes of tumour-related morbidity and mortality. Mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) signalling pathways have been shown to play critical roles in tumorigenesis. However, the precise pathological role(s) of mitogen-activated protein kinase phosphatase-1 (MKP-1) in different ...

pituitary tumour transforming gene 1 (PTTG1) is over-expressed in a variety of endocrine-related tumours. We aimed at evaluating PTTG1 expression and function in human neoplastic parafollicular C-cells, represented by medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) and C-cell hyperplasia (CCH) samples and by the TT cell line. TT cells and tissues derived from ...

Malignant and trophoblastic cells share the capacity to migrate and invade surrounding tissues; however, trophoblast invasion during implantation is tightly regulated, whereas that associated with tumour progression is not. It is likely that similar mechanisms underlie the dynamic regulation of cell invasion and migration in both cases, and that these ...

The aims of this study were to examine the significance of CD3+ cells in patients with epithelial ovarian cancer and to determine their influence on the disease in relation to their location within tumours. A 157-core tissue-microarray constructed from primary ovarian cancer patients treated at Nottingham-University-Hospitals (2000-2007) was stained for ...

Cellular migration is an essential prerequisite for metastatic dissemination of cancer cells. This study demonstrates that the neuron/testis-specific F-actin-targeted inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate 3-kinase-A (ITPKA) is ectopically expressed in different human tumor cell lines and during tumor progression in the metastatic tumor model Balb-neuT. High expression of ITPKA increases invasive migration in ...

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is a common and often devastating disease without curative treatment when advanced or recurrent. The aim of this study was to assess whether capsid-modified oncolytic adenoviruses have therapeutic efficacy in HNSCC low passage tumour cell cultures and if it could be further improved ...

Chondrosarcomas are resistant to conventional chemo- and radiotherapy. A subset of chondrosarcomas arises secondarily in the benign tumour syndromes enchondromatosis (EC) and multiple osteochondromas (MO), and prevention of tumour development would greatly improve prognosis. We therefore investigated the effect of selective COX-2 inhibition on chondrosarcoma growth. COX-2 expression was studied ...

We studied the expression of inducible heat shock protein (HSP27, HSP72) and multidrug-resistance protein (MRP) in co-cultures of human colon carcinoma cell spheroids obtained from different grades of tumour with normal human colon epithelium, myofibroblast and endothelial cell monolayers. We also measured the influence of recombinant human transforming growth factor ...

Interferons (IFNs) are naturally produced cytokines with multiple important biological functions. The activity of recombinant feline IFN-omega (rFeIFN-omega) alone and in combination with chemotherapeutic drugs was tested on canine and feline mammary carcinoma cell lines (REM134 and CAT-MT) and putative tumour-initiating cells (TIC) derived from these cell lines by sphere ...

Stage 4 neuroblastoma (NB) is a devastating childhood cancer whose poor outcome has remained essentially unchanged in the last 20 years. Receptor tyrosine kinases have important roles in the control of proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis of NB cells. Thus, we tested the activity of second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitor Dasatinib in ...

Positron emission tomography (PET) using F-18 fluoro-3'-deoxy-3-L-fluorothymidine (FLT) offers noninvasive assessment of cell proliferation in vivo. The most important application refers to the evaluation of tumour proliferative activity, representing a key feature of malignancy. Most data to date suggest that FLT is not a suitable biomarker for staging of cancers. ...

The objective of the study was to determine the immunohistochemical expression of canine TERT in canine testicular tumours comparing two different antibodies for TERT, and to correlate them with well established markers specific to dividing cells such as PCNA and ki67, and with expression of the p53 tumour suppressor gene. ...

Human fucosyltransferase IX (hFucT-IX) is a highly conserved alpha1,3 fucosyltransferase with a distinct acceptor and site specificity. hFucT-IX catalyses the transfer of activated fucose to a sugar acceptor, thereby forming the Lewis x epitope. This epitope is responsible for recognition phenomena throughout the body e.g. in tumour growth. Detailed characterisation ...

A case of a colonic carcinoma showing a pancreatic acinar cell differentiation is described for the first time. A 65-year-old woman underwent surgical resection for an ulcerated protruding tumour of 4 x 2.5 cm in size on the anterior wall of the sigmoid colon. Histologically, tumour cells were organized in ...

A 4-year-old Dutch warmblood mare was presented with a 10-month history of ataxia and proprioceptive deficits. Computed tomography defined a large, non-contrast enhancing mass in the left cerebral hemisphere. Necropsy examination revealed a tumour that effaced much of the piriform and temporal lobes. Microscopically the lesion was classified as a ...

Tumour cannibalism is a characteristic of malignancy and metastatic behaviour. This atypical phagocytic activity is a crucial survival option for tumours in conditions of low nutrient supply, and has some similarities to the phagocytic activity of unicellular microorganisms. In fact, Dictyostelium discoideum has been used widely as a model to ...

The hypothesis that malignant tumours are generated by rare populations of cancer stem cells that are more tumourigenic than other cancer cells has gained increasing credence. The objective of this study was to identify and characterise a subpopulation of human sarcoma-initiating cells. We examined established rhabdomyosarcoma cell lines by flow ...

Tumour metastasis is the result of a complex sequence of events, including migration of tumour cells through stroma, proteolytic degradation of stromal and vessel wall elements, intravasation, transport through the circulation, extravasation and outgrowth at compatible sites in the body (the 'seed and soil' hypothesis). However, the high incidence of ...

PURPOSE: Tumour lactate levels have been shown to correlate with high radioresistance in tumour models in vivo. The study aimed to evaluate the impact of pathophysiological extracellular lactate concentrations and acidosis on the in vitro survival and radioresponse of various cancer cell lines. MATERIALS AND METHODS: HCT-116, HT29 (colorectal) and ...

PURPOSE: The hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-dependent transcriptional response is often very pronounced in hypoxic microregions of solid malignant tumours, leading to secretion of pro-angiogenic factors and activation of a hypoxia-tolerant, glycolytic metabolism. Here, the influence of the microenvironment of tumour-initiating cells as a factor determining intertumoural variations in the relative contributions ...

We previously showed that introduction of transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP) 1 into TAP-negative CMT.64, a major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) down-regulated mouse lung carcinoma cell line, enhanced T-cell immunity against TAP-deficient tumour cells. Here, we have addressed two questions: (1) whether such immunity can be further augmented ...

Germ cell tumours (GCTs) represent the leading cause of cancer-related morbidity and mortality in young men aged 18-35 years. Transformation of the cell of origin results in tumours with several unique properties. GCTs are characterized by gain of the short arm of chromosome 12 in almost all cases, a frequency ...

PURPOSE: Our objective was to introduce immunomagnetic separation (IMS) in ocular research by evaluating the possibility of detecting tumour cells in bone marrow (BM) and peripheral blood (PB) samples and validating the captured cells as melanocytic cells. METHODS: Mononuclear cell (MNC) fractions isolated from BM and PB in uveal melanoma ...

BACKGROUND: Despite improvements in the treatment of patients with Ewing family tumours (EFT) during the past decades, the prognosis for patients with advanced disease is still unsatisfying. New treatment strategies have to be developed. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A hypoxanthine/aminopterin/thymidine (HAT)-sensitive EFT cell line was developed by repetitive treatment of the ...

Human tumourous imaginal disc (Tid1), a human homologue of the Drosophila tumour suppressor protein Tid56, is involved in multiple intracellular signalling pathways such as apoptosis, cell proliferation, and cell survival. Here, we investigated the anti-tumourigenic activity of Tid1 in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) in vitro and in ...

The tumour stroma is believed to contribute to some of the most malignant characteristics of epithelial tumours. However, signalling between stromal and tumour cells is complex and remains poorly understood. Here we show that the genetic inactivation of Pten in stromal fibroblasts of mouse mammary glands accelerated the initiation, progression ...

OBJECTIVE: During surgery for colon carcinoma, tumour cells may spread into the blood and may lead to the development of distant metastases. The most frequent sites of metastases are the liver and lungs. A new therapeutic approach is required to prevent tumour implantation of freely circulating tumour cells during and ...

Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Although enticing, the concept of a chemotherapeutic treatment directed towards a single target that kills tumour cells, without any harmful side effects or death of neighbouring cells is probably na??ve, due to the fact that tumour cells arise from normal ...

OBJECTIVES: Syndecan-1 is a transmembrane proteoglycan involved in various biological processes. Its extracellular, transmembrane and cytoplasmic domains may all participate in signal transduction. The aim of this study was to investigate the biological roles of these domains of syndecan-1. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We transfected cells of two mesenchymal tumour cell ...

The BCL-2 homology domain 3 (BH3)-only protein, B-cell lymphoma 2 interacting mediator of cell death (BIM) is a potent pro-apoptotic protein belonging to the B-cell lymphoma 2 protein family. In recent years, advances in basic biology have provided a clearer picture of how BIM kills cells and how BIM expression ...

The current practice of cell immunotherapy against cancer has encountered a substantial challenge, that is, targeted delivery of therapeutic cells to tumour sites is not favourably managed. In this study, we aimed to provide an engineering solution to govern the cell targeting and actions, for which a biomaterial model is ...

In some types of cancers, tumour-infiltrating monocytes/macrophages (TIM) may be responsible for the formation of an invasive microenvironment in a manner dependent on the secretion of soluble mediators such as tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF). Human pancreatic carcinoma (HPC-4) cells are able to induce TNF production by monocytes. Here, the effect ...

In the present study, we compared the effects of nanocrystalline fullerene suspension (nanoC(60)) on tumour cell growth in vitro and in vivo. NanoC(60) suspension was prepared by solvent exchange using tetrahydrofuran to dissolve C(60). In vitro, nanoC(60) caused oxidative stress, mitochondrial depolarization and caspase activation, leading to apoptotic and necrotic ...

Glioblastomas (GBMs) are the most frequent and malignant brain tumors in adults. Glucocorticoids (GCs) are routinely used in the treatment of GBMs for their capacity to reduce the tumor-associated edema. Few in vitro studies have suggested that GCs inhibit the migration and invasion of GBM cells through the induction of ...

BACKGROUND: Fascin is overexpressed in many cancers, including colorectal, but its role in the malignant transformation of benign colorectal adenomas is unclear. METHODS: Immunohistochemical analysis of fascin expression was carried out in resected human colorectal adenoma specimens. The effects of forced overexpression of fascin on adenoma cell motility were also ...

Autophagy or "self-eating" digests proteins and functionless cell organelles to reuse. This cell-own recycling system attracts much attention in tumour biology. One of the major functions of autophagy is maintaining cellular homeostasis. Thus, it is constitutive active in all living cells. Damaged or dispensable proteins and organelles are removed to ...

PURPOSE: To evaluate the role of p53 in radionuclide gene therapy, we investigated the cytotoxic effect of (131)I and (188)Re following cotransfection of the sodium iodide symporter (NIS) and wild-type p53 (wt-p53) genes into cancer cells. METHODS: The NIS gene was transfected to human anaplastic thyroid carcinoma cells (ARO) expressing ...

Of all processes involved in carcinogenesis, local invasion and the formation of metastases are the clinically most relevant but the scientifically least well understood at their molecular level. Recent experimental progress has identified that tumour hypoxia not only induces tumour angiogenesis, but also modulates the expression of several genes that ...

To evaluate the frequency of neuroendocrine cell hyperplasia (NEH) in resected neuroendocrine tumours and non-neuroendocrine cell carcinomas and to study its relationship to selected clinical parameters. Random blocks without tumour from resected typical carcinoids (TCs, n = 46), atypical carcinoids (ACs, n = 14), large cell neuroendocrine carcinomas (LCNECs, n ...