effect of collagen 6 on tumor growth in NSG mice (renew 7228)

Cancer stem cells (CSC) are a putative subset of tumor cells that have self-maintenance capacity and the ability to generate the diversity of cells that comprise a given tumor. CSC have been attributed with being the cellular basis of drug resistance, metastasis, and relapse. Receptor tyrosine AXL expression is linked to CSC phenotype. AXL is highly expressed in metastasis and related to drug resistance. Also AXL expression is detected from self-renewal mammary epithelium stem cell population. AXL expression is regulated by cell microenvironment, also called niche. We have done large scale screening of CSC niche with microenvironment array by using AXL expression as marker of CSC phenotype. We dissected out interesting candidates of CSC niche. Now we want to confirm that these CSC niche components induce CSC phenotype and that’s why increase tumor growth incidence.