Dishevelled-3 (Dvl3) is regarded as a binding hub with many different interacting partners. However, its regulation and mechanism on cancer stemness remain to be explored. In this study, we showed that Dvl3 was significantly overexpressed in human hepatocellular carcinomas (HCCs) and promoted cancer stemness both in vitro and in vivo. We found that the non-phosphorylated (NP)-Dvl3 was more stab...

Telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT), the catalytic subunit of the enzyme telomerase, is robustly expressed in cancer cells. TERT enables cells to avoid chromosome shortening during repeated replication by maintaining telomere length. However, several lines of evidence indicate that many cancer cells exhibit shorter telomere length than normal tissues, implying an additional function of TERT...

Keloid is the abnormal wound healing puzzled by the aggressive growth and high recurrence rate due to its unrevealed key pathogenic mechanism. MicroRNAs contribute to a series of biological processes including epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and cells stemness involved in fibrotic disease. Here, using microRNAs microarray analysis we found mir-21-5p was significantly up-regulated in kel...

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common and malignant cancers. The HCC incidence gets a strong sexual dimorphism as men are the major sufferers in this disaster. Although several studies have uncovered the presentative correlation between the axis of androgen/androgen receptor (AR) and HCC incidence, the mechanism is still largely unknown. Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are a small s...

Our previous research indicated miR-410 played a critical role in promoting the tumorigenesis and development of NSCLC (non-small cells lung cancer). MiR-410 has been recently reported to be crucial for development and differentiation of embryonic stem cells. But it remains elusive whether miR-410 stimulates the stemness of cancer until now. Herein, we identify miR-410 induces the stemness and ...

BACKGROUND Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are a promising and powerful source of cells for applications in regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, cell-based therapies, and drug discovery. Many researchers have employed conventional culture techniques using feeder cells to expand hESCs in significant numbers, although feeder-free culture techniques have recently been developed. In regard...

lethality of malignant breast cancer in human patients. Although various targeted and non-targeted therapies can occasionally control the progress of breast cancer, a significant portion of patients develop resistance to chemotherapy and experience metastatic recurrence. The epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT), a key developmental program in embryogenesis, has been found to be closely in...

Tumor initiating cells (TICs) possessing cancer stemness were shown to be enriched after therapy, resulting in the relapse and metastasis of head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNC). An effective therapeutic approach suppressing the HNC-TICs would be a potential method to improve the treatments for HNC. We observed that the treatment of silibinin (SB) dose dependently down-regulated the ALD...

CD44, an extracellular matrix (ECM) receptor, has been described as a cancer stem cell marker in multiple cancers, including head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). HNSCC orasphere formation or stemness was characterized by cleavage of CD44, and thus we hypothesized that this proteolytic processing may be critical to stemness and tumorigenesis. We tested this hypothesis by examining the ...

Xanthohumol is a unique prenylated flavonoid in hops (Humulus lupulus L.) and beer. Xanthohumol has been shown to possess a variety of pharmacological activities. There is little research on its effect on doxorubicin-resistant breast cancer cells (MCF-7/ADR) and the cancer stem-like cells exiting in this cell line. In the present study, we investigate the effect of xanthohumol on the viability ...