PURPOSE Prostate cancer metastasis to secondary organs is considered an initial event in the development of hormone refractory disease and remains the major cause of death among prostate cancer patients. In this study, we investigated the role of fascin, a cytoskeleton actin-bundling protein involved in the formation of filopodia and cell migration, in prostate cancer progression. EXPERIMENTA...

In developing Drosophila bristles two species of cross-linker, the forked proteins and fascin, connect adjacent actin filaments into bundles. Bundles form in three phases: (a) tiny bundles appear; (b) these bundles aggregate into larger bundles; and (c) the filaments become maximally cross-linked by fascin. In mutants that completely lack forked, aggregation of the bundles does not occur so tha...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Fascin is an actin-bundling protein that is important in cell motility. Fascin expression has been shown to have a potential role in tumor progression for some epithelial tumors. However, there are only a few studies related to its expression in mesenchymal tumors. We investigated fascin expression in gastrointestinal stromal tumors. METHODS Thirty gastrointestinal stromal tum...

OBJECTIVE Fascin-1 is an actin-binding protein that promotes cell proliferation, adhesion and motility. We tested the hypothesis that fascin-1 expression correlates with clinicopathological parameters of colorectal adenocarcinomas. METHODS Immunohistochemical analysis of fascin-1 was performed in tissue microarrays of 91 surgical specimens, including 32 well, 33 moderately, and 26 poorly diff...

The actin bundling protein fascin 1 is not expressed in adult epithelial tissues, but during development it is transiently expressed in many different cell types, and later in adults it is expressed in a subset of immune cells, nervous tissues, endothelial cells, smooth muscle cells and pericytes. In contrast to the wealth of knowledge about the role of fascin 1 in cancer cell migration and inv...

Although prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing can identify early-stage prostate cancers, additional biomarkers are needed for risk stratification. In one study, high levels of the actin-bundling protein, fascin-1, were correlated with lethal-phase, hormone-refractory prostate cancer. Analyses of independent samples are needed to establish the value of fascin-1 as a possible biomarker. We exa...

After birth, stem cells in the subventricular zone (SVZ) generate neuroblasts that migrate along the rostral migratory stream (RMS) to become interneurons in the olfactory bulb (OB). This migration is a fundamental event controlling the proper integration of new neurons in a pre-existing synaptic network. Many regulators of neuroblast migration have been identified; however, still very little i...

Recurrence of carcinomas due to cells that migrate away from the primary tumor is a major problem in cancer treatment. Immunohistochemical analyses of human carcinomas have consistently correlated up-regulation of the actin-bundling protein fascin with a clinically aggressive phenotype and poor prognosis. To understand the functional and mechanistic contributions of fascin, we undertook inducib...

Fascin is well characterized in vitro as an actin-bundling protein and its increased expression is correlated with the invasiveness of various cancers. However, the actual roles and regulation of Fascin in vivo remain elusive. Here we show that Fascin is required for the invasive-like migration of blood cells in Drosophila embryos. Fascin expression is highly regulated during embryonic developm...

PURPOSE To investigate the functional properties, subcellular localization, and chromosomal location of retinal fascin. METHODS Recombinant retinal fascin protein was prepared by using a baculovirus-insect expression system. Actin-binding and -bundling assays were performed with chick actin purified from skeletal muscle. Western blot analysis and immunohistochemistry were performed with a pol...