Titel (eng)

Feline SCCs of the Head and Neck Display Partial Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition and Harbor Stem Cell-like Cancer Cells

Autor*in

Stefan Kummer   University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna

Sabine Brandt   University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna

Sibylle Kneissl   University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna

Christoph Jindra   University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna / Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences

Ingrid Walter   University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna

Andrea Klang   University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna

Carina Strohmayer   University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna

Verlag

MDPI

Beschreibung (eng)

Squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (HNSCC) is a malignant cancer disease in humans and animals. There is ample evidence that the high plasticity of cancer cells, i.e., their ability to switch from an epithelial to a mesenchymal, endothelial, and stem cell-like phenotype, chiefly contributes to progression, metastasis, and multidrug resistance of human HNSCCs. In feline HNSCC, the field of cancer cell plasticity is still unexplored. In this study, fourteen feline HNSCCs with a known feline papillomavirus (FPV) infection status were subjected to histopathological grading and subsequent screening for expression of epithelial, mesenchymal, and stem cell markers by immunohistochemistry (IHC) and immunofluorescence staining (IF). Irrespective of the FPV infection status, all tumors except one corresponded to high-grade, invasive lesions and concurrently expressed epithelial (keratins, E-cadherin, β-catenin) and mesenchymal (vimentin, N-cadherin, CD146) proteins. This finding is indicative for partial epithelial-mesenchymal transition (pEMT) events in the lesions, as similarly described for human HNSCCs. IF double staining revealed the presence of CD44/CD271 double-positive cells notably within the tumors' invasive fronts that likely correspond to cancer stem cells. Taken together, the obtained findings suggest that feline HNSCCs closely resemble their human counterparts with respect to tumor cell plasticity.

Sprache des Objekts

Englisch

Datum

2023

Rechte

Dieses Werk bzw. dieser Inhalt steht unter einer
CC BY 4.0 - Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International Lizenz.

CC BY 4.0 International

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Klassifikation

Growth-Factor Receptor; Drug-Resistance; Expression; Carcinoma; Identification; Metastasis; Isoforms; Cadherin; Emt

Mitglied in der/den Collection(s) (1)