Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
7
pubmed:dateCreated
2008-4-2
pubmed:abstractText
Chemotherapy, radiation, and growth inhibitory drugs preferentially eliminate actively growing cancer cells. Cancer recurrence is currently thought to be due to nondividing cancer stem/progenitor cells that are resistant to these therapies. Different therapeutic approaches need to be considered for the elimination of the cancer stem cell population. Immunotherapy is one such approach. In addition to specificity and lack of toxicity, immunotherapy targets cancer cells irrespective of their state of proliferation, as long as they express particular tumor antigens. For that reason, it is important to examine if the tumor antigens that are currently being tested as immunotherapeutic agents are also present on cancer stem cells. This study aimed to determine if one well-known tumor antigen, MUC1, which is being tested as an immunotherapy target on tumor cells, is also expressed on the quiescent cancer stem/progenitor cells. We used the so-called side population (SP) cells found in the MCF7 breast cancer cell line, which we first confirmed by cell surface markers and gene profiling to be highly enriched in cells that fulfill specific functional, phenotypic, and molecular criteria for being tumor stem/progenitor cells. We show that these cells express MUC1 and give rise to MUC1(+) tumors in vivo, which maintain the MUC1(+) SP population. MUC1 on SP cells is hypoglycosylated and heavily sialylated; the characteristics of the tumor-specific form were expressed on mature cancer cells and recognized by tumor-specific T cells and antibodies. This suggests that stem/progenitor cells, like mature tumor cells, would be targets of MUC1-directed immunotherapy.
pubmed:grant
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:chemical
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Apr
pubmed:issn
1538-7445
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Electronic
pubmed:day
1
pubmed:volume
68
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
2419-26
pubmed:dateRevised
2008-11-21
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2008
pubmed:articleTitle
MCF7 side population cells with characteristics of cancer stem/progenitor cells express the tumor antigen MUC1.
pubmed:affiliation
Department of Immunology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA.
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't, Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural