Elucidation of breast cancer tissue diversity by integration analysis of minimum unit omics

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15H04294
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Tumor biology
• Research Institution: Kanazawa University
• Principal Investigator: Gotoh Noriko 金沢大学, がん進展制御研究所, 教授 (10251448)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 東條 有伸 東京大学, 医科学研究所, 教授 (00211681) ; 島村 徹平 名古屋大学, 医学系研究科, 特任准教授 (00623943) ; 岡本 康司 国立研究開発法人国立がん研究センター, 研究所, 分野長 (80342913)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: Single cell / cancer stem cells / breast cancer, / semaphoring, neuropilin

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Cancer tissues are composed of very heterogenous cell populations, including cancer stem cells, progenitor cancer cells and differentiated cancer cells. It is thus important to clarify the characteristics of each cell type at single cell levels. The aim of this study to clarify the molecular mechanisms how cancer stem cells are maintained in the caner stem cell niche by analyzing transcriptome at single cell levels. We have clarified the semaphorin-neuropilin (NP) signal plays critical roles for breast cancer stem cells. We sorted NP-positive and control NP-negative cell population derived from breast cancer patient samples and analyzed transcriptome at single cell levels by using the cutting-edge technologies. We found that NP-positive cell population show strong variance in mRNA expression patterns than NP-negative cell population. These findings suggest that NP-positive cells are composed of more heterogenous cell populations with clear hierarchy than NP-negative cells.

Free Research Field

分子病態学