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Tumor Suppression in Hybrids

Posted by jpawelek on 06 Jul 2013 at 13:18 GMT

It is unclear why hybrids between tumor cells and normal BMDCs such as macrophages are not suppressed in tumorgenicity because they usually are suppressed if the normal cell is a keratinocyte or fibroblast. Maybe most of such hybrids are indeed suppressed and don’t divide so they never develop, but the few that aren’t suppressed, for whatever reason, emerge through selective pressure—i.e. the hybrids that aren’t suppressed are the hybrids that we see. This is an important question that remains for future studies.

In the article discussion section we write: “In earlier studies experimental tumor hybrids generated in vitro between cancer cells, including melanoma, and normal epithelial cells or fibroblasts were generally suppressed in tumorigenicity and the expression of differentiated functions, leading to the discovery of tumor suppressor genes [39-40]. But later, using macrophages as fusion partners with melanoma cells, resultant hybrids expressed genes and differentiated traits from both parents and metastasis was markedly enhanced [7-11]. This indicated co-expression of epigenomes from both parental lineages. Co-expressed hybrid genomes could account for the complexity of gene expression patterns in cancer cells and also how malignant cells could have such a large repertoire of myeloid-like capabilities such as angiogenesis, matrix alterations, motility, chemotaxis and immune signaling pathways, as well as undergo epidermal-mesodermal transition [1,41]".

John Pawelek, Corresponding Author

No competing interests declared.
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