Establishment new therapy and analysis of carcinogenesis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma by cell competition

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24689064
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (A)
• Allocation Type: Partial Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Otorhinolaryngology
• Research Institution: Kanazawa University
• Principal Investigator: Satoru Kondo 金沢大学, 大学病院, 助教 (70436822)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 細胞競合 / 発がん / 上咽頭がん / EBV / 癌幹細胞

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In recent study, new theory has been proposed that cancer tissues composed by a few “cancer stem cells” which can generate cancer cells, and many “differentiated cancer cells”. From this theory, we reported　Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) genes could induce cancer stem cells of nasophraryngeal carcinoma (NPC) .
On the other hand, it is reported that cancer proliferation is regulated by “cell competition”, interaction between normal cells surrounding cancer cells and cancer cells. In this study, we generate “ normal cell”, “precancerous cell”, “cancer cell”, and “cancer stem cell” using plasmid that contains EBV gene and other precancerous NPC genes. Finally, we examined cell competition phenomena between these cell lines. We detected cell competition phenomena in every co-culture of these cells. In NPC tissues and cell lines, we found that high Sparc expression in normal cells. These finding suggest that Sparc is closely related cell competition.

Free Research Field

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