High-throughput flow cytometry screening of human hepatocellular carcinoma reveals CD146 to be a novel marker of tumor-initiating cells.

ABSTRACT: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains a common and lethal cancer. Cancer stem cells, or tumor-initiating cells (TICs), are thought to contribute to the pathogenesis of HCC, but remain to be fully characterized. Unbiased screens of primary human HCC cells for the identification of novel HCC TIC markers have not been reported. We conducted high-throughput flow cytometry (HT-FC) profiling to characterize the expression of 375 CD antigens on tumor cells from 10 different human HCC samples. We selected 91 of these for further analysis based on HT-FC data that showed consistent expression in discrete, rare, sortable populations of HCC cells. Nine of these CD antigens demonstrated significantly increased expression in the EpCAM⁺ stem/progenitor fraction of a human HCC cell line and we

SUBMITTER: Chen K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5613743 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature