前沿科技及其它

Angiogenesis is the growth of new vessels from existing vessels. It is important in the physiological processes of wound healing, embryogenesis, and the female menstrual cycle and involved in pathologies such as diabetic retinopathy and rheumatoid arthritis (1). There is now abundant e ...

Cell adhesion is a process fundamental to tumor metastasis. Egress of cells from tumors and their entry into secondary tissues requires the regulated adhesion that underlies the process of cell migration. Thus, adhesion molecules must bind and release counter-receptors on the adhesive ...

Tumors are microecosystems in which a continuous cross-talk between cancer cells and host cells decides on the invasive behavior of the tumor cell population as a whole (1). Both compartments secrete activating and inhibitory factors that modulate activities such as cell-extracellu ...

Metastasis is the final step in tumor progression from a benign cell to a fully malignant cell. The metastatic phenotype results from a wide range of phenotypic changes in the cell from the expression of proteinases, to adhesion molecules, the loss of proteinase inhibitors and tumor suppressor ...

In metastasis research, it may sometimes be necessary to separate populations of tumor cells from a mixed cell population such as a tumor, peripheral blood, or bone marrow. In addition, the normal counterparts of populations of tumor cells can be separated to allow direct comparisons to be made (1) ...

Our understanding of the cancer metastatic process has advanced considerably in recent years. However, the early stages of tumor progression and micrometastasis formation have been difficult to analyze. These studies are hampered by the inability to identify small numbers of tumor c ...

The interaction between tumor and host cells determines to a large extent the outcome, namely tumor growth and progression toward metastases or tumor arrest, dormancy, or rejection. Most of the studies published so far on interactions of tumor cells and host cells were made in vitro and dealt with a ...

In the past 10 years, we have developed a new approach to the development of a clinically accurate rodent model for human cancer based on our invention of surgical orthotopic implantation (SOI). The SOI models have been described in approx 70 publications (2-72) and in four patents.* SOI allows human t ...

Cancer is a prevalent and poorly understood disease in human populations. It is generally viewed as a complex, genetic, multistep process involving a series of independent events, each of which creates an incremental phenotypic aberration. For example, the capabilities for extended pr ...

Animal studies are costly, time consuming, and subject to several restrictive regulations. However, the metastatic process is one of the research areas in which the in vivo studies remain most relevant (1). In fact, the in vitro studies are not fully predictive of the metastatic behavior of a tumor c ...

Metastasis is a multistep phenomenon, and all steps have to be successfully and consecutively followed through until a clinically manifest metastasis occurs. Although all of these steps have been defined and individual steps can be mimicked in vitro, the rate-limiting step of metastases ...

The growth of metastases is the end result of a multistep process in which cancer cells invade through basement membranes, extravasate into bloodstream or lymphatic vessels, survive transit in the circulation, arrest, and then grow in the new site (1). Tissue culture traits that reliably pred ...

Metastatic spread is generally responsible for the mortality of colorectal cancer patients. There are no adequate treatments for advanced colorectal cancer, and novel therapeutic modalities are urgently required. To this end, valid metastatic models, which accurately mimic the ...

One means of testing a candidate gene for involvement in the metastatic process is to alter the expression of that gene in a tumor cell and then to test the metastatic potential of the altered cells. In designing such experiments, it is crucial to take into account the factor of tumor heterogeneity (1). Some ...

The growth and dissemination of malignant tumors continues to have a devastating impact on people throughout the United States and the rest of the world. In fact, it is estimated that well over a half a million new cases of cancer will be diagnosed per year (1). The most commonly used clinical approaches to t ...

Metastasis is the most devastating aspect of cancer, and the major reason for treatment failure. It is perhaps surprising, therefore, that it is only relatively recently that a wide variety of clinically relevant metastasis models have become generally available. For more than 20 years, the m ...

Invasion occurs when invasion promoter molecules outbalance the function of invasion suppressors (1). Examples of invasion promoters are cell-matrix adhesion molecules, extracellular proteases, and cell motility factors. In normal tissues, positional stability of the cel ...

Metastasis is the major cause of morbidity and death for cancer patients. A critical challenge to clinical and basic scientists is the development of improved prognostic methods to predict the metastatic aggressiveness of a patient’s individual tumor and especially to control local in ...

Basement membranes are specialized extracellular matrices that are comprised of several biological components including collagens, laminins, and proteoglycans. They form thin continuous sheetlike structures that separate epithelial tissues from the adjacent conne ...

Cellular migration is an integral aspect in response to extracellular stimuli, which is fundamental to numerous biological processes such as embryogenesis, inflammation, wound healing, tissue regeneration, and tumor invasion and metastasis (1,2). Abundant studies centered on ...