Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 8, 2025
Studying TGF-β Signaling and TGF-β-induced Epithelial-to-mesenchymal Transition in Breast Cancer and Normal Cells
Published on: October 27, 2020
Betulinic Acid Inhibits the Stemness of Gastric Cancer Cells by Regulating the GRP78-TGF-β1 Signaling Pathway and
Jen-Lung Chen1, Yun-Shen Tai2, Hsin-Yi Tsai3,4
1Department of Surgery, E-Da Hospital, Kaohsiung 82445, Taiwan.
Abstract:
Cancer stemness is the process by which cancer cells acquire chemoresistance and self-renewal in the tumor microenvironment. Glucose-regulated protein 78 (GRP78) is a biomarker for gastric cancer and is involved in cancer stemness. By inducing cancer stemness in various types of cancer, the polarization of macrophages into tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) controls tumor progression. Betulinic acid (BA) is a bioactive natural compound with anticancer properties. However, whether GRP78 regulates TAM-mediated cancer stemness in the tumor microenvironment and whether BA inhibits GRP78-mediated cancer stemness in gastric cancer remain unknown. In this study, we investigated the role of GRP78 in gastric cancer stemness in a tumor microenvironment regulated by BA. The results indicated that BA inhibited not only GRP78-mediated stemness-related protein expression and GRP78-TGF-β-mediated macrophage polarization into TAMs, but also TAM-mediated cancer stemness. Therefore, BA is a promising candidate for clinical application in combination-chemotherapy targeting cancer stemness.
More Related Videos
09:24Combined Conditional Knockdown and Adapted Sphere Formation Assay to Study a Stemness-Associated Gene of Patient-derived Gastric Cancer Stem Cells
Published on: May 9, 2020
07:44Studying the Effects of Tumor-Secreted Paracrine Ligands on Macrophage Activation using Co-Culture with Permeable Membrane Supports
Published on: November 28, 2019
