ePrints@IIScePrints@IISc Home | About | Browse | Latest Additions | Advanced Search | Contact | Help

Lineage plasticity in cancer: The tale of a skin-walker

Thankamony, AP and Subbalakshmi, AR and Jolly, MK and Nair, R (2021) Lineage plasticity in cancer: The tale of a skin-walker. In: Cancers, 13 (14).

[img]
Preview
PDF
can_13-14_2021.pdf - Published Version

Download (1MB) | Preview
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers13143602

Abstract

Lineage plasticity, the switching of cells from one lineage to another, has been recognized as a cardinal property essential for embryonic development, tissue repair and homeostasis. How-ever, such a highly regulated process goes awry when cancer cells exploit this inherent ability to their advantage, resulting in tumorigenesis, relapse, metastasis and therapy resistance. In this re-view, we summarize our current understanding on the role of lineage plasticity in tumor progression and therapeutic resistance in multiple cancers. Lineage plasticity can be triggered by treatment itself and is reported across various solid as well as liquid tumors. Here, we focus on the importance of lineage switching in tumor progression and therapeutic resistance of solid tumors such as the prostate, lung, hepatocellular and colorectal carcinoma and the myeloid and lymphoid lineage switch observed in leukemias. Besides this, we also discuss the role of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in facilitating the lineage switch in biphasic cancers such as aggressive carcinosarco-mas. We also discuss the mechanisms involved, current therapeutic approaches and challenges that lie ahead in taming the scourge of lineage plasticity in cancer. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Item Type: Journal Article
Publication: Cancers
Publisher: MDPI AG
Additional Information: The copyright for this article belongs to MDPI AG
Department/Centre: Division of Interdisciplinary Sciences > Centre for Biosystems Science and Engineering
Date Deposited: 15 Nov 2021 11:29
Last Modified: 15 Nov 2021 11:29
URI: http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/69661

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item