Cancer Biology

Cannabinoid combination targets NOTCH1-mutated T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia through the integrated stress response pathway

1. Elazar Besser
2. Anat Gelfand
3. Shiri Procaccia
4. Paula Berman
5. David Meiri

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study follows up on previous work defining the anti-leukemic effects of a previously characterized cannabis extract on Notch-activated T cells and identifies several pathways that mediate its anti-cancer activity including the ER calcium and integrated stress response. The evidence is solid, but several concerns remain including the over reliance on a single cell line for the majority of the studies and lack of integration of the observations with existing literature

Reviewed by eLife

Exploration of drug resistance mechanisms in triple negative breast cancer cells using a microfluidic device and patient tissues

1. Wanyoung Lim
2. Inwoo Hwang
3. Jiande Zhang
4. Zhenzhong Chen
5. Jeonghun Han
6. Jaehyung Jeon
7. Bon-Kyoung Koo
8. Sangmin Kim
9. Jeong Eon Lee
10. Youngkwan Kim
11. Kenneth J Pienta
12. Sarah R Amend
13. Robert H Austin
14. Jee-Yin Ahn
15. Sungsu Park

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study based on the use of Cancer Drug Resistance Accelerator (CDRA) chip is valuable as a platform technology to assess chemoresistance mechanisms. The strength is convincing from the technological point of view. However, the use of a single cell line model is a limitation. However we acknowledge the authors' plan to further validate their current findings across multiple TNBC cell lines.

Reviewed by eLife

Mechanically stimulated osteocytes maintain tumor dormancy in bone metastasis of non-small cell lung cancer by releasing small extracellular vesicles

1. Jing Xie
2. Yafei Xu
3. Xuhua Liu
4. Li Long
5. Ji Chen
6. Chunyan Huang
7. Yan Shao
8. Zhiqing Cai
9. Zhimin Zhang
10. Ruixin Zhou
11. Jiarong Leng
12. Xiaochun Bai
13. Qiancheng Song

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This is an important study, that adds to the field a new understanding of exercise or mechanical loading, microRNAs, and secreted extracellular vessicles in the field of lung cancer (NSCLC), which may have relevance to other osteolytic cancers. The strength of the evidence was mixed: whereas in vitro microRNA experiments were convincing, other elements were incomplete (e.g., proving the roles of osteocytes, as opposed to other mechanosensitive cells, in vivo). This work would be of broad interest to those investigating osteolytic cancers, and the role of exercise in bone cancer, preclinically.

Reviewed by eLife

Unravelling the metastasis-preventing effect of miR-200c in vitro and in vivo

1. Bianca Köhler
2. Emily Brieger
3. Tom Brandstätter
4. Elisa Hörterer
5. Ulrich Wilk
6. Jana Pöhmerer
7. Anna Jötten
8. Philipp Paulitschke
9. Chase P Broedersz
10. Stefan Zahler
11. Joachim O Rädler
12. Ernst Wagner
13. Andreas Roidl

Reviewed by Review Commons

Transcriptional immune suppression and up-regulation of double-stranded DNA damage and repair repertoires in ecDNA-containing tumors

1. Miin S Lin
2. Se-Young Jo
3. Jens Luebeck
4. Howard Y Chang
5. Sihan Wu
6. Paul S Mischel
7. Vineet Bafna

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study of extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) identifies genes that distinguish ecDNA+ and ecDNA- tumors. The findings in the manuscript are important and the genomic analyses convincing. However, some of the data remain observational and the inferences would therefore be more robust with experimental validation. This manuscript could well be of relevance to biologists interested in cancer biology and gene regulation.

Reviewed by eLife

Unveiling the signaling network of FLT3-ITD AML improves drug sensitivity prediction

1. Sara Latini
2. Veronica Venafra
3. Giorgia Massacci
4. Valeria Bica
5. Simone Graziosi
6. Giusj Monia Pugliese
7. Marta Iannuccelli
8. Filippo Frioni
9. Gessica Minnella
10. John Donald Marra
11. Patrizia Chiusolo
12. Gerardo Pepe
13. Manuela Helmer Citterich
14. Dimitros Mougiakakos
15. Martin Böttcher
16. Thomas Fischer
17. Livia Perfetto
18. Francesca Sacco

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study could potentially represent a step forward towards personalized medicine by combining cell-based data and a prior-knowledge network to derive Boolean-based predictive logic models to uncover altered protein/signaling networks within cancer cells. The level of evidence supporting the conclusions is solid, as the authors present analyses on independent, real-world data to validate their approach. These findings could be of interest to medical biologists working in the field of cancer, as the work should inform drug development and treatment choices in the field of oncology.

Reviewed by eLife

Large pan-cancer cell screen coupled to (phospho-)proteomics underscores high-dose vitamin C as a potent anti-cancer agent

1. Andrea Vallés-Martí
2. Franziska Böttger
3. Elysia Yau
4. Khadija Tejjani
5. Loes Meijs
6. Sugandhi Sharma
7. Madiha Mumtaz
8. Tessa Y. S. Le Large
9. Ayse Erozenci
10. Daniëlle Dekker
11. Tim Schelfhorst
12. Jan Paul Medema
13. Irene V Bijnsdorp
14. Jaco C Knol
15. Sander R Piersma
16. Thang V. Pham
17. Elisa Giovannetti
18. Connie R Jiménez

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This useful study utilizes proteomics analysis across a large panel of 51 cancer cell lines to elucidate mechanisms underlying the sensitivity of cancer cells to high-dose vitamin C (Ascorbate). While the associations between specific molecular pathways and sensitivity to ascorbate are interesting, a major limitation is that the study is largely descriptive and incomplete, lacking evidence on the molecular underpinnings of cancer cells' sensitivity to high-dose vitamin C.

Reviewed by eLife

Metabolic reprogramming of cancer cells by JMJD6-mediated pre-mRNA splicing associated with therapeutic response to splicing inhibitor

1. Carolyn M Jablonowski
2. Waise Quarni
3. Shivendra Singh
4. Haiyan Tan
5. Dhanushka Hewa Bostanthirige
6. Hongjian Jin
7. Jie Fang
8. Ti-Cheng Chang
9. David Finkelstein
10. Ji-Hoon Cho
11. Dongli Hu
12. Vishwajeeth Pagala
13. Sadie Miki Sakurada
14. Shondra M Pruett-Miller
15. Ruoning Wang
16. Andrew Murphy
17. Kevin Freeman
18. Junmin Peng
19. Andrew M Davidoff
20. Gang Wu
21. Jun Yang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study reports on key characteristics of MYC-driven cancers: dysregulated pre-mRNA splicing and altered metabolism, with the data being overall solid. The manuscript should be of broad interest to cancer biologists due to its therapeutic implications.

Reviewed by eLife

Disassembly of embryonic keratin filaments promotes pancreatic cancer metastases

1. Ryan R. Kawalerski
2. Mariana Torrente Gonçalves
3. Chun-Hao Pan
4. Robert Tseng
5. Lucia Roa-Peña
6. Cindy V. Leiton
7. Luke A. Torre-Healy
8. Taryn Boyle
9. Sumedha Chowdhury
10. Natasha T. Snider
11. Kenneth R. Shroyer
12. Luisa F. Escobar-Hoyos

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The authors address the function of keratin 17 (K17), a marker of the most aggressive pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas (PDACs). While this potentially useful study addresses a significant area of pancreatic cancer research, the lack of evidence demonstrating nuclear localization of K17 in human PDAC and the excessive reliance on a single cell line reduce the significance of the work. Moreover, the weak phenotypes of K17 phosphosite mutants provide incomplete support for the authors' mechanistic model.

Reviewed by eLife

Improving PD-1 blockade plus chemotherapy for complete remission of lung cancer by nanoPDLIM2

1. Fan Sun
2. Pengrong Yan
3. Yadong Xiao
4. Hongqiao Zhang
5. Steven D Shapiro
6. Gutian Xiao
7. Zhaoxia Qu

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study presents a valuable finding for the immunotherapy of cancer. The data support the role of PDLIM2 as a tumor suppressor, and more immediately, its relevance for strategies to improve the efficacy of immunotherapy. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling and the work will be of interest to biomedical scientists working on cancer immunology.

Reviewed by eLife