Cysts mark the early stage of metastatic tumor development in non-small cell lung cancer.

2017 
// Chitra Thakur 1, 2 , Ulf R. Rapp 1, 3 and Thomas Rudel 4 1 Cancer Metastasis Group, Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried 82152, Germany 2 Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48201, USA 3 Department of Lung Development and Remodeling, Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research, Member of the German Center for Lung Research (DZL), Bad Nauheim 61231, Germany 4 Department of Microbiology, Biocenter, University of Wuerzburg, Wuerzburg D-97074, Germany Correspondence to: Chitra Thakur, email: chitra.thakur@wayne.edu Keywords: lung cancer; metastasis; cysts; lineage tracing; dedifferentiation Received: August 19, 2017      Accepted: December 24, 2017      Published: December 30, 2017 ABSTRACT Identifying metastatic tumor growth at an early stage has been one of the biggest challenges in the treatment of lung cancer. By genetic lineage tracing approach in a conditional model of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) in mice, we demonstrate that cystic lesions represent an early stage of metastatic invasion. We generated a mouse model for NSCLC which incorporated a heritable DsRed fluorescent tag driven by the ubiquitous CAG promoter in the alveolar type II cells of the lung. We found early cystic lesions in a secondary organ (liver) that lacked the expression of bona fide lung makers namely Scgb1a1 and surfactant protein C Sftpc and were DsRed positive hence identifying lung as their source of origin. This demonstrates the significant potential of alveolar type II cells in orchestrating the process of metastasis, rendering it as one of the target cell types of the lung of therapeutic importance in human NSCLC.
    • Correction
    • Source
    • Cite
    • Save
    • Machine Reading By IdeaReader
    36
    References
    3
    Citations
    NaN
    KQI
    []