Targeting the BRAF Signaling Pathway in CD133pos Cancer Stem Cells of Anaplastic Thyroid Carcinoma

A new interesting article has been published in Asian Pac J Cancer Prev. 2019 May 25;20(5):1353-1360. and titled:

Targeting the BRAF Signaling Pathway in CD133pos Cancer Stem Cells of Anaplastic Thyroid Carcinoma

Authors of this article are:

Bozorg-Ghalati F, Hedayati M, Dianatpour M, Mosaffa N, Azizi F.

A summary of the article is shown below:

BACKGROUND: Cancer stem cells (CSCs) with a self-renewal ability in tumor cells population, execute a pivotal function in tumorigenesis, retrogression, and metastasis of malignant cancers such as anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC).MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this study, we isolated CSCs subpopulation with CD133 surface marker from three ATC cell lines by magnetic cell sorting assay. After confirming the segregation by the flow cytometry method, BRAF and sodium-iodide symporter (NIS) genes were investigated in them before and after incubation with BRAF inhibitor. Also, we evaluated the NIS protein expression and localization.RESULTS: Established upon q-RT PCR data, when compared to human normal thyrocytes, the BRAFV600E gene was over-expressed in CD133pos cells (>1705.99 ± 55.55 fold, Mean ± SEM, n=3, P- value<0.05), whilst the expression of NIS gene was very restricted (< 0.0008 ± 5.43 fold, Mean ± SEM, n=3, P- value<0.05) in them. Also, our results showed that BRAF inhibition affected NIS protein expression and localization.CONCLUSIONS: Current study showed that the differentiate genes/proteins expression can be induced in the CSCs via focus on signal transduction pathways and targeting their molecules, that are involved in expression of these genes/proteins. Therefore, attention to targeting CSCs along with routine thyroid cancer therapy, can help to ATC treatment.Creative Commons Attribution License
Check out the article’s website on Pubmed for more information:



This article is a good source of information and a good way to become familiar with topics such as: Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma; positive CD133 cancer stem cells; BRAF inhibition; sodium; iodide symporter.

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