Pancreatic cancer is a disease that carries a poor prognosis. Accurate tissue diagnosis is required. Tumours contain a high content of stromal tissue and therefore biopsies may be inconclusive. Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) have been investigated as a potential “liquid ...
Read More »Tumour cell-derived exosomes confer mesenchymal stromal cells with the ability to enhance tumour growth
Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) are a major component of the tumour microenvironment. A plethora of elegant studies focusing on tumour-derived MSCs have shown that they, unlike normal MSCs in other tissue, exhibit a strong ability to promote tumour progression. However, ...
Read More »The tumour trail left in blood
from Nature by Kelly Rae Chi – Liquid biopsies can detect cancer signs from a blood sample, without the need for invasive procedures. But further work is needed before they can become reliable diagnostic tools. A lung biopsy is an ...
Read More »Differentiation of tumour-promoting stromal myofibroblasts by cancer exosomes
Activation of myofibroblast rich stroma is a rate-limiting step essential for cancer progression. The responsible factors are not fully understood, but TGFβ1 is probably critical. A proportion of TGFβ1 is associated with extracellular nano-vesicles termed exosomes, secreted by carcinoma cells, ...
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