The mitochondrial DNA common deletion as a potential biomarker of cancer-associated fibroblasts from skin basal and squamous cell carcinomas.

ABSTRACT: Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) are components of the tumor microenvironment and represent appealing therapeutic targets for translational studies. Conventional protein-based biomarkers for CAFs have been reported to be limited in their specificity, rendering difficult the identification of CAFs from normal fibroblasts (NFs) in clinical samples and dampening the development of CAF-targeted therapies to treat cancer. In this study, we propose the mitochondrial RNA and the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) common deletion (CD) as novel indicators of CAF identity. We found that cancer-activation correlated with decreased levels of the mtDNA CD, a condition not due to altered mitochondria count or cellular redox state, but potentially linked to the generalized overexpression of mtDNA maintenance

SUBMITTER: Fontana GA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10766618 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature