Versican is highly expressed during the early stages of tissue development and its expression is elevated during wound repair and tumor growth. There is little literature on the potential role of breast cancer stem cells on the cellular-extracellular matrix interactions involving versican. An anti-versican short hairpin RNA (shRNA) was used to observe the effect of reduction of versican on brea...

OBJECTIVE ADAMTS-1 is a matrix metalloproteinase which cleaves versican in the cumulus oocyte complex under the effect of luteinizing hormone surge in the periovulatory period. Altered levels may have a role in the pathogenesis of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). We aimed to determine the serum versican and ADAMTS-1 (a disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin motif-1) levels in PC...

Chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans have been implicated in the regulation of cell migration and pattern formation in the developing peripheral nervous system. To identify whether the large aggregating proteoglycan versican might be mediating these processes, we prepared monospecific antibodies against a recombinant core protein fragment of chick versican. The purified antibodies recognize the pr...

The proteoglycan versican is implicated in several atherogenic events, including stimulation of vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) growth and migration, retention of lipoproteins, and promotion of thrombogenesis. A high content of intimal versican also correlates with a low content of elastin, suggesting an inhibitory role for versican in elastogenesis. To determine whether reduced production o...

Versican, a proteoglycan recently implicated in hair follicle induction, has been shown to influence axon outgrowth in vitro and in vivo. We used immunohistochemistry to study the relationship between versican expression and innervation, during rat vibrissa follicle development and the adult hair cycle. During development, nerve fibres were commonly associated with areas of weak versican expres...

PURPOSE Determination of meaningful prognostic indicesremains a high priority for women diagnosed with node-negative primary breast cancer. Currently, 30% of these women relapse, and there is no reliable means of predicting this group of patients. This study investigates whether the level of expression of versican, an anticell adhesive proteoglycan, in the peritumoral stromal tissue of women wi...

Versican/proteoglycan-mesenchymal (PG-M) is a large chondroitin sulfate (CS) proteoglycan of the extracellular matrix (ECM) that is constitutively expressed in adult tissues such as dermis and blood vessels. It serves as a structural macromolecule of the ECM, while in embryonic tissue it is transiently expressed at high levels and regulates cell adhesion, migration, proliferation, and different...

BACKGROUND & AIMS TGF-β1 is an abundant cytokine present in the tumour microenvironment. It has been shown to trigger versican expression in human osteosarcoma cells, which may account for the metastatic potential of these cells. However, the underlying mechanism of TGF-β1-mediated metastasis remains unclear. The aim of this study was to evaluate the roles of versican in TGF-β1-induced osteosar...

PURPOSE In this study, biochemistry, molecular biology, immunohistochemistry, and electron microscopy techniques were used to examine whether versican, which is known to bind fibrillin-1, interacts with fibrillin-1 in the ciliary body and vitreous, and whether the versican in this complex binds to hyaluronan. METHODS The new polyclonal antibodies against the amino and carboxyl termini of vers...

Patients with clinically localized prostate cancer who might be cured by aggressive management are not easily identified using current clinical information. Additional, more accurate, biomarkers of tumor behavior need to be identified to improve clinical outcome. Our previous studies indicated that the concentration of the glycosaminoglycan chondroitin sulfate in prostatic stroma might be a use...