Ascites enriches for ovarian cancer stem-like cells that express membrane GRP78

ABSTRACT: Ovarian cancer patients are generally diagnosed at stage III/IV, when ascites is common. The volume of ascites positively correlates with the extent of metastasis and negatively with prognosis. Membrane GRP78, a stress-inducible endoplasmic reticulum chaperone which also appears on the plasma membrane (memGRP78) of aggressive cancers, plays a crucial role in the maintenance of embryonic stem cells. Our present study demonstrates that tumor cells isolated from ascites generated by epithelial ovarian cancer (ID8 cells) bearing mice have increased memGRP78 expression compared to ID8 cells in normal culture. We hypothesize that these ascites associated memGRP78+ cells are cancer stem-like cells (CSC) and memGRP78 is functionally important in CSCs. Supporting this hypothesis, we show that memGR

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus

SUBMITTER: Jen-Tsan Chi 

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-61285 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress