Cancer Biology

A positive feedback loop between ZEB2 and ACSL4 regulates lipid metabolism to promote breast cancer metastasis

1. Jiamin Lin
2. Pingping Zhang
3. Wei Liu
4. Guorong Liu
5. Juan Zhang
6. Min Yan
7. Yuyou Duan
8. Na Yang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study provides a valuable finding on the mechanistic connections between epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and lipid metabolism. The authors identified the ZEB2/ACSL4 axis as a newly discovered metastatic metabolic pathway that promotes both lipogenesis and fatty acid oxidation. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid. The work will be of interest to medical biologists working on cancer.

Reviewed by eLife

Single-cell characterization of human GBM reveals regional differences in tumor-infiltrating leukocyte activation

1. Philip Schmassmann
2. Julien Roux
3. Steffen Dettling
4. Sabrina Hogan
5. Tala Shekarian
6. Tomás A Martins
7. Marie-Françoise Ritz
8. Sylvia Herter
9. Marina Bacac
10. Gregor Hutter

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study is valuable and contains results that are supported by convincing evidence. In the future, the observations could be further strengthened by independent validation, and by looking at larger numbers of patients, as well as by determining whether patient heterogeneity is either contributing to or obscuring certain patterns. The work will be of interest to a broad audience in the oncology and immunology fields as it is on a cancer type that does not respond well to immune checkpoint therapeutics.

Reviewed by eLife

Cancer-associated fibroblasts promote drug resistance in ALK -driven lung adenocarcinoma cells by upregulating lipid biosynthesis

1. Ann-Kathrin Daum
2. Lisa Schlicker
3. Marc A. Schneider
4. Thomas Muley
5. Ursula Klingmüller
6. Almut Schulze
7. Michael Thomas
8. Petros Christopoulos
9. Holger Sültmann

Reviewed by Review Commons

NOTCH3 drives meningioma tumorigenesis and resistance to radiotherapy

1. Abrar Choudhury
2. Martha A. Cady
3. Calixto-Hope G. Lucas
4. Hinda Najem
5. Joanna J. Phillips
6. Brisa Palikuqi
7. Naomi Zakimi
8. Tara Joseph
9. Janeth Ochoa Birrueta
10. William C. Chen
11. Nancy Ann Oberheim Bush
12. Shawn L. Hervey-Jumper
13. Ophir D. Klein
14. Christine M. Toedebusch
15. Craig M. Horbinski
16. Stephen T. Magill
17. Aparna Bhaduri
18. Arie Perry
19. Peter J. Dickinson
20. Amy B. Heimberger
21. Alan Ashworth
22. Elizabeth E. Crouch
23. David R. Raleigh

Reviewed by PREreview

Disseminating cells in human oral tumours possess an EMT cancer stem cell marker profile that is predictive of metastasis in image-based machine learning

1. Gehad Youssef
2. Luke Gammon
3. Leah Ambler
4. Sophia Lunetto
5. Alice Scemama
6. Hannah Cottom
7. Kim Piper
8. Ian C Mackenzie
9. Michael P Philpott
10. Adrian Biddle

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This is a valuable study that convincingly demonstrates that quantification of EpCAM+/CD24+/Vimentin+ cells in the stroma of human oral cancers followed by machine learning algorithms can be used as a prognostic indicator of metastasis.

Reviewed by eLife

Molecular portraits of colorectal cancer morphological regions

1. Eva Budinská
2. Martina Hrivňáková
3. Tina Catela Ivkovic
4. Marie Madrzyk
5. Rudolf Nenutil
6. Beatrix Bencsiková
7. Dagmar Al Tukmachi
8. Michaela Ručková
9. Lenka Zdražilová Dubská
10. Ondřej Slabý
11. Josef Feit
12. Mihnea-Paul Dragomir
13. Petra Borilova Linhartova
14. Sabine Tejpar
15. Vlad Popovici

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study presents a valuable finding on the putative molecular patterns underlying characteristic morphological regions observed in colorectal cancer (CRC). The authors provide a morphological framework through which clinicians might improve the performance of molecular signatures and consequently predict the clinical response of patients with better accuracy. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid. The work will be of interest to clinicians and cancer biologists working in the field of CRC.

Reviewed by eLife

Replication stress inducing ELF3 upregulation promotes BRCA1-deficient breast tumorigenesis in luminal progenitors

1. Jiadong Zhou
2. Xiao Albert Zhou
3. Li Hu
4. Yujie Ma
5. Jun Zhan
6. Zhanzhan Xu
7. Mei Zhou
8. Qinjian Shen
9. Yuntao Xie
10. Jiadong Wang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study reveals ELF3 as a putative candidate driver of luminal progenitor (LP) transformation. Up-regulation of ELF3 during replicative stress conditions and in BRCA1 deficient cells may permit cell proliferation by suppressing genome instability. While the hypothesis is compelling, the experimental support is still incomplete, as it does not adequately demonstrate the role of ELF3 in LP cells per se. The mechanistic underpinnings by which ELF3 promotes cell tolerance to DNA damage were not fully explored either. With improvements, the work has the potential to enhance our understanding of how BRCA1 deficiency fuels LP transformation and thereby breast tumorigenesis.

Reviewed by eLife

Post-EMT: Cadherin-11 mediates cancer hijacking fibroblasts

1. Weirong Kang
2. Yibo Fan
3. Yinxiao Du
4. Elina A. Tonkova
5. Yi-Hsin Hsu
6. Kel Vin Tan
7. Stephanie Alexander
8. Bin Sheng Wong
9. Haocheng Yang
10. Jingyuan Luo
11. Kuo Yao
12. Jiayao Yang
13. Xin Hu
14. Tingting Liu
15. Yu Gan
16. Jian Zhang
17. Jean J. Zhao
18. Konstantinos Konstantopoulos
19. Peter Friedl
20. Pek Lan Khong
21. Aiping Lu
22. Mien-Chie Hung
23. Michael B. Brenner
24. Jeffrey E. Segall
25. Zhizhan Gu

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This paper presents a series of experiments investigating the role of cadherin-11 mediated interactions between cancer cells and fibroblasts in metastasis using updated 3D cell co-invasion assays. The primarily descriptive data are a valuable contribution to our understanding of the nature of cross cell-type interactions in metastasis, but are incomplete with respect to the far-reaching conclusions about the central role cadherin-11, especially given the complex nature of the phenotype and the need to better contextualize these observations in a complete picture of metastasis.

Reviewed by eLife

Reduced S-nitrosylation of TGFβ1 elevates its binding affinity towards the receptor and promotes fibrogenic signaling in the breast

1. Joshua Letson
2. Saori Furuta

Reviewed by PREreview

Single-cell sequencing highlights heterogeneity and malignant progression in actinic keratosis and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma

1. Dan-Dan Zou
2. Ya-Zhou Sun
3. Xin-Jie Li
4. Wen-Juan Wu
5. Dan Xu
6. Yu-Tong He
7. Jue Qi
8. Ying Tu
9. Yang Tang
10. Yun-Hua Tu
11. Xiao-Li Wang
12. Xing Li
13. Feng-Yan Lu
14. Ling Huang
15. Heng Long
16. Li He
17. Xin Li

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study delineates the molecular changes driving the progression from actinic keratosis (AK) to cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC). Using state-of-the-art single-cell RNA profiling of 138,982 cells from 13 samples of six patients including AK, squamous cell carcinoma in situ (SCCIS), cSCC, and their matched normal tissues, thus covering comprehensive clinical courses of cSCC, the authors provide an invaluable data resource. This study identified several previously unreported and interesting candidate genes involved in different stages of the malignant progression of skin neoplasias, which have been validated in situ, and partially in vitro. Although data analysis needs improvement and comparison to other published data sets to fully support the claims and conclusions, these findings substantially advance our understanding of the molecular changes leading to skin cancer.

Reviewed by eLife