Biomedical subjects

Catherine M Shachaf

Publications and source records attributed to Catherine M Shachaf.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Tumor dormancy and MYC inactivation: pushing cancer to the brink of normalcy.

Upon MYC inactivation, tumors variously undergo proliferative arrest, cellular differentiation, and apoptosis and in some cases, apparently permanently revoking tumorigenesis. In liver tumor cells, we recently showed that MYC inactivation uncovers stem cell properties and triggers differentiation, but in this case, their neoplastic properties are restorable by MYC reactivation. Thus, whereas oncogene inactivation can push cancer to the brink of normalcy, some cells retain the latent capacity to turn cancerous again, arguing that they may exist in a state of tumor dormancy.

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PubMed2005

Rehabilitation of cancer through oncogene inactivation.

The inactivation of the MYC oncogene alone can reverse tumorigenesis. Upon MYC inactivation, tumors stereotypically reverse, undergoing proliferative arrest, cellular differentiation and/or apoptosis. The precise consequences of MYC inactivation appear to depend upon both genetic and epigenetic parameters. In some types of cancer following MYC inactivation, tumor cells become well differentiated and biologically and histologically normal, inducing sustained tumor regression. However, in some cases, these normal-appearing cells are actually dormant tumor cells and upon MYC reactivation they rapidly recover their tumorigenic properties. Future therapies to treat cancer will need to address the possibility that tumor cells can camouflage a normal phenotype following treatment, resting in a dormant, latently cancerous state.

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PubMed2004

MYC inactivation uncovers pluripotent differentiation and tumour dormancy in hepatocellular cancer.

Hepatocellular carcinoma is generally refractory to clinical treatment. Here, we report that inactivation of the MYC oncogene is sufficient to induce sustained regression of invasive liver cancers. MYC inactivation resulted en masse in tumour cells differentiating into hepatocytes and biliary cells forming bile duct structures, and this was associated with rapid loss of expression of the tumour marker alpha-fetoprotein, the increase in expression of liver cell markers cytokeratin 8 and carcinoembryonic antigen, and in some cells the liver stem cell marker cytokeratin 19. Using in vivo bioluminescence imaging we found that many of these tumour cells remained dormant as long as MYC remain inactivated; however, MYC reactivation immediately restored their neoplastic features. Using array comparative genomic hybridization we confirmed that these dormant liver cells and the restored tumour retained the identical molecular signature and hence were clonally derived from the tumour cells. Our results show how oncogene inactivation may reverse tumorigenesis in the most clinically difficult cancers. Oncogene inactivation uncovers the pluripotent capacity of tumours to differentiate into normal cellular lineages and tissue structures, while retaining their latent potential to become cancerous, and hence existing in a state of tumour dormancy.

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PubMed2004

The E47 transcription factor negatively regulates CD5 expression during thymocyte development.

The expression of CD5 increases progressively as thymocytes mature. We have shown that CD5 expression is controlled by a tissue-specific regulatory promoter located upstream of the CD5 translation start sites. Deletion of this regulatory promoter, which contains three potential transcription factor binding sites (CCAAT, kappa E2, and ets) reduces the promoter activity to basal level. Of these sites, only ets proved essential for CD5 expression in T cell lines. Here, we introduce a role for the E47 transcription factor and the CD5 promoter kappa E2 site in regulating CD5 expression during thymocyte development. Using T cell lines, we show that (i) mutation of the kappa E2 site in the CD5 regulatory promoter results in a significant elevation of CD5 promoter activity; (ii) the E47 transcription factor binds to the kappa E2 site; and (iii) overexpression of E47 inhibits CD5 expression. We then show, in high-dimensional fluorescence-activated cell sorting studies with primary thymocytes at successive developmental stages, that (i) intracellular E47 levels decrease as surface CD5 expression increases; (ii) E47 expression is down-regulated and CD5 expression is correspondingly up-regulated in DN3 thymocytes in RAG-2-deficient mice injected with anti-CD3 to mimic pre-T cell receptor stimulation; and (iii) E47 expression is down-regulated and CD5 expression is up-regulated when double positive thymocytes are stimulated in vitro with anti-CD3. Based on these data, we propose that E47 negatively regulates CD5 expression by interacting with the kappa E2 site in the CD5 regulatory promoter and that decreases in E47 in response to developmental signals are critical to the progressive increase in CD5 expression as thymocytes mature.

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PubMed2004

Conditional animal models: a strategy to define when oncogenes will be effective targets to treat cancer.

The ability to model cancer in the mouse has provided a robust methodology to dissect the molecular etiology of cancer. These models serve as potentially powerful platforms to preclinically evaluate novel therapeutics. In particular, the recent development of strategies to conditionally induce the or knockout the function of genes in a tissue specific manner has enabled investigators to engineer mice to demonstrate that the targeted inactivation of specific oncogenes can be effective in inducing sustained regression of tumors. Thus, these animal models will be useful to define the specific genes that will be therapeutically useful to target for the treatment of particular human cancers.

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