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Purpose of review: The epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) and the generation of Cancer Stem Cells (CSC) are two fundamental aspects contributing to tumor growth, acquisition of resistance to therapy, formation of metastases, and tumor…
Heterogeneity is ubiquitous in stem cells (SC), cancer cells (CS), and cancer stem cells (CSC). SC and CSC heterogeneity is manifested as diverse sub-populations with self-renewing and unique regeneration capacity. Moreover, the CSC progeny…
Cancer cells have the plasticity to adjust their metabolic phenotypes for survival and metastasis. During metastasis, a developmental program known as the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) plays a critical role. There is extensive…
Cancer is a systemic heterogeneous disease involving complex molecular networks. Tumor formation involves epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), which promotes both metastasis and plasticity of cancer cells. Recent experiments proposed…
Current biological knowledge supports the existence of a secondary group of cancer cells within the body of the tumour that exhibits stem cell-like properties. These cells are termed Cancer Stem Cells (CSCs}, and as opposed to the more…
Tumors are defined by their intense proliferation, but sometimes cancer cells turn senescent and stop replicating. In the stochastic cancer model in which all cells are tumorigenic, senescence is seen as the result of random mutations,…
Cancer cells can acquire a spectrum of stable hybrid epithelial/mesenchymal (E/M) states during epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Cells in these hybrid E/M phenotypes often combine epithelial and mesenchymal features and tend to…
Tumor growth, which plays a central role in cancer evolution, depends on both the internal features of the cells, such as their ability for unlimited duplication, and the external conditions, e.g., supply of nutrients, as well as the…
Understanding cell-fate decisions during tumorigenesis and metastasis is a major challenge in modern cancer biology. One canonical cell-fate decision that cancer cells undergo is Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) and its reverse…
As cancer advances, cells often spread from the primary tumor to other parts of the body and form metastases. This is the main cause of cancer related mortality. Here we investigate a conceptually simple model of metastasis formation where…
Drug resistance and metastasis - the major complications in cancer - both entail adaptation of cancer cells to stress, whether a drug or a lethal new environment. Intriguingly, these adaptive processes share similar features that cannot be…
Cancer is increasingly perceived as a systems-level, network phenomenon. The major trend of malignant transformation can be described as a two-phase process, where an initial increase of network plasticity is followed by a decrease of…
Metastasis, the spread of cancer cells from a primary tumor to secondary location(s) in the human organism, is the ultimate cause of death for the majority of cancer patients. That is why, it is crucial to understand metastases evolution in…
There is a widening recognition that cancer cells are products of complex developmental processes. Carcinogenesis and metastasis formation are increasingly described as systems-level, network phenomena. Here we propose that malignant…
The ability to locally degrade the extracellular matrix (ECM) and interact with the tumour microenvironment is a key process distinguishing cancer from normal cells, and is a critical step in the metastatic spread of the tumour. The…
We present the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) from two perspectives: experimental/technological and theoretical. We review the state of the current understanding of the regulatory networks that underlie EMT in three…
Tumor metastasis is one of the main factors responsible for the high fatality rate of cancer. Metastasis can occur after malignant cells transition from the epithelial phenotype to the mesenchymal phenotype. This transformation allows cells…
The transition between epithelial and mesenchymal (EMT) is a fundamental cellular process that plays critical roles in development, cancer metastasis, and tissue wound healing. EMT is not a binary process but involves multiple partial EMT…
In this review, we discuss recent advances on the plasticity of cancer stem cells and highlight their relevance to understand the metastatic process and to guide therapeutic interventions. Recent results suggest that the strict hierarchical…
Theoretical reasoning suggests that human cancer may result from knocking down the genetic constraints evolved for maintenance of the metazoan multicellularity, which, however, requires a critical test. Using xenograft-based experimental…