Year: 2015
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Treatment of advanced colorectal cancer (CRC) is impacted by tumour heterogeneity and the development of drug resistance. Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are a subpopulation of tumour cells with the ability to self-renew and evade current treatments. This has led to the implication of CSCs in tumour recurrence. Our laboratory used serial colonosphere culture to enrich for CSCs from two human CRC cell lines, HCT116 and SW480. The expression of CSC markers was assessed via flow cytometry and RT-qPCR. The effect of chemotherapy on self-renewal and drug resistance-related gene expression was also examined. The sphere formation assay enriched for cells with higher levels of the CSC markers CD44, CD166 and EpCAM. Chemotherapy treatment significantly reduced sphere and colony formation in parental cell lines. Treatment also altered the expression of the drug-resistance related genes ABCB1, ABCG2 and ALDH3A1. These data provide evidence that chemotherapy influences the colorectal cancer stem cell phenotype through reducing the ability to self-renew and altering the expression of multi- drug resistance genes.
Author: Stacey J. Butler
Language: English
Topic: Cancer Cells and Metastasis
Subfield: Oncology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: China Scholarship Council
OpenAlex ID: W2291395821