Because the cell-surface HA receptor CD44 has been implicated in cancer progression, HA-CD44 interaction was then inhibited by incubation with an anti-CD44 antibody.
Ectopic expression of KLF4 increased the sphere formation ability and CD44/133-positive cell numbers, which can be reversed by abundant expression of miR-124, suggesting that KLF4 is a functional target of miR-124 in tumourigenesis and cancer progression of HCC.
The objective of this study was to investigate whether CD44 v3-containing isoforms are involved in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) tumor progression.
Functional and correlative data implicate a role of CD44 variant isoforms in adhesion dependent processes such as lymphocyte recirculation and tumor progression and metastasis.
This new knowledge could provide the groundwork necessary for establishing new tumor markers and developing important, novel drugs targeted against HA/CD44-associated tumor progression, which can be utilized in the therapeutic treatment of metastatic cancer patients.
We defined a parameter CD44/CD24 ratio to present the expression level of CD44 and CD24 and found that high CD44/CD24 ratio and ALDH1<sup>+</sup> are both indicators for cancer malignancy, but play different functions during tumor progression.
CD44 is an adhesion molecule involved in many biological functions and has been described to play a role in tumor progression as well as in promotion of metastasis.
Additional subsets of CTCs within individual patients were characterized by divergent expression of genes involved in epithelial-mesenchymal transition (e.g., CDH2, MMPs, VIM, or ZEB1 and 2), DNA repair (RAD51), resistance to cancer therapy (e.g., AR, AR-V7, ERBB2, EGFR), cancer stemness (e.g., CD24 and CD44), activated signaling pathways involved in tumor progression (e.g., PIK3CA and MTOR) or cross talks between tumors and immune cells (e.g., CCL4, CXCL2, CXCL9, IL15, IL1B, or IL8).
Although the anti-tumor activity of hyaluronan-oligosaccharides, a hyaluronan-CD44 interaction antagonist, is effective in sensitizing tumor cells to chemotherapeutic agents and reducing tumor growth in xenografts, hyaluronan-oligosaccharide alone was not effective in reducing tumor progression in Apc Min/+ mice.
Hyaluronan (HA), an important glycosaminoglycan component of the extracellular matrix (ECM), and its major cell surface receptor, CD44, have been suggested to be important cellular mediators influencing tumor progression and treatment resistance in head and neck cancer.
Extracellular RHAMM-CD44 partnering sustains CD44 surface display and enhances CD44-mediated signaling through ERK1 and ERK2 (ERK1/2); it might also contribute to tumor progression by enhancing and/or activating the latent tumor-promoting properties of CD44.
A large variety of alternatively spliced CD44 variants are expressed by different tumors with possible implication for tumor progression, formation of metastasis and survival.
Because human cutaneous melanoma is among the most aggressive human cancers, we explored expression of CD44 isoforms (CD44v) in lesions of melanocytic tumor progression.
Syndecan-1 is a cell surface heparan sulfate proteoglycan with various biological functions relevant to tumor progression and inflammation, including cell-cell adhesion, cell-matrix interaction, and cytokine signaling driving cell proliferation and motility.