Leaders, Followers, and Intermediates in Collective Cancer Invasion

ZHANG, B.; JIANG, Y.; MORCIGLIO, A. J.; MARCUS, A.; MAZZITELLO, K. I.

Atlanta

Jornada; Molecular Basis of Disease; 2019

Georgia State University

Cancer is a metastatic disease. Tumor heterogeneity and metastasis are the main courses of cancer treatment failure.? Metastasis starts from invasion; collective invasion, instead ofsingle cell invasion, has been shown to lead to more successful metastasis and poorer patient outcome.? Leader and follower phenotypes have been observed in collective invasion, mimicking sprouting angiogenesis in bothmorphology and Notch-Delta signaling.? Overexpression of Jagged leads to the emergence of a third, intermediate phenotype in angiogenesis. Questions: Does intermediate phenotypes exist in the collective invasion of none small cell lung cancer? What are the conditions for a cell to adopt such phenotype and how does it influence collective invasion?