Human Gene Set: HARRIS_BRAIN_CANCER_PROGENITORS

For the Mouse gene set with the same name, see HARRIS_BRAIN_CANCER_PROGENITORS

Standard name HARRIS_BRAIN_CANCER_PROGENITORS
Systematic name M1694
Brief description Genes from the brain cancer stem (cancer stem cell, CSC) signature.
Full description or abstract The recent identification of cancer stem cells (CSCs) in multiple human cancers provides a new inroad to understanding tumorigenesis at the cellular level. CSCs are defined by their characteristics of self-renewal, multipotentiality, and tumor initiation upon transplantation. By testing for these defining characteristics, we provide evidence for the existence of CSCs in a transgenic mouse model of glioma, S100beta-verbB;Trp53. In this glioma model, CSCs are enriched in the side population (SP) cells. These SP cells have enhanced tumor-initiating capacity, self-renewal, and multipotentiality compared with non-SP cells from the same tumors. Furthermore, gene expression analysis comparing fluorescence-activated cell sorting-sorted cancer SP cells to non-SP cancer cells and normal neural SP cells identified 45 candidate genes that are differentially expressed in glioma stem cells. We validated the expression of two genes from this list (S100a4 and S100a6) in primary mouse gliomas and human glioma samples. Analyses of xenografted human glioblastoma multiforme cell lines and primary human glioma tissues show that S100A4 and S100A6 are expressed in a small subset of cancer cells and that their abundance is positively correlated to tumor grade. In conclusion, this study shows that CSCs exist in a mouse glioma model, suggesting that this model can be used to study the molecular and cellular characteristics of CSCs in vivo and to further test the CSC hypothesis.
Collection C2: Curated
      CGP: Chemical and Genetic Perturbations
Source publication Pubmed 19074870   Authors: Harris MA,Yang H,Low BE,Mukherjee J,Guha A,Bronson RT,Shultz LD,Israel MA,Yun K
Exact source Table 1
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Source species Mus musculus
Contributed by Leona Saunders (MSigDB Team)
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Version history 3.1: First introduced

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