Extreme normality in superficial or seemingly inconsequential matters can be a sign that something is deeply wrong. This thought may have occurred to scientists at the University of Colorado (UC) when they began looking at a population of cancer cells that, unlike most cancer cells, avoids downregulating MHC Class I molecules. Cancer cells tend to downregulate these molecules because they can display abnormal proteins and attract the immune system’s attention. Cancer cells that carry a normal number of a surplus of MHC Class I molecules are conspicuously, well, inconspicuous. And that’s not all. The MHC Class I-high cells were also expressed high levels of CDK1, a “normal” molecule that regulates the cell cycle. Overexpression of CDK1, the UC scientists found, increased the spheroid forming ability, tumorigenic potential, and tumor-initiating capacity of the curious cell type. Although the scientists could suppress these stem-cell-like characteristics by inhibiting of CDK1 with ...
Original Article: Cancer-Initiating Cells Stay “Stemmy” via CDK1/Sox2 Interaction