Hypoxia Induced Angiogenesis and Tumor Microenvironment

Neuromic's HUVECS Used in Study

The tumor microenvironment is essential for promoting tumor physiology, structure, function, and growth. It is important that emerging therapies eradicate both tumors and related microenvironment. This important study focuses on the formation of these microenvironments: ERICA K. SCHNETTLER. THE FUNCTIONAL ROLE OF MIR-210 IN HYPOXIA-INDUCED ANGIOGENESIS. A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA. FEBRUARY 2017...Primary Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) were purchased from Lonza (Basel, Switzerland) and Neuromics (Edina, MN)...

Figure: miR-210 sensitizes HUVECs to bFGF induced tube formation. (A)Representative images of HUVEC tube formation are shown at 10X magnification. Cells were treated with miR-210 or sc-miR, serum starved, and then plated on a Geltrex (reduced growth factor) layer in the presence or absence or bFGF to stimulate tube formation. (B) Histogram represents quantification of total tube length, number of nodes, and junctions in the tube formation assay described in A. Analysis done with ImageJ Angiogenesis Analyzer plugin.

We will continue to post our updates our primary Human Endothelial Cells as they develop.

SOX2 and Initiation of Breast Tumors

I consider it a feather in Neuromics' cap when our reagent(s) are referenced in a Nature Journal. More importantly it enables me to keep the pulse on novel and important discovery.

This pub references use of one of our SOX2 Antibody and comes from Dr. Angel García Martín and his Team at INBIOMED: O Leis, A Eguiara, E Lopez-Arribillaga, M J Alberdi, S Hernandez-Garcia, K Elorriaga, A Pandiella, R Rezola and A G Martin. Sox2 expression in breast tumours and activation in breast cancer stem cells. Oncogene , (8 August 2011) | doi:10.1038/onc.2011.338.

The important insight from this study is: "Over-expression of Sox2 increased mammosphere formation, effect dependent on continuous Sox2 expression; furthermore, Sox2 knockdown prevented mammosphere formation and delayed tumour formation in xenograft tumour initiation models. Induction of Sox2 expression was achieved through activation of the distal enhancer of Sox2 promoter upon sphere formation, the same element that controls Sox2 transcription in pluripotent stem cells. These findings suggest that reactivation of Sox2 represents an early step in breast tumour initiation, explaining tumour heterogeneity by placing the tumour-initiating event in any cell along the axis of mammary differentiation."

Could these findings ultimately lead to a better diagnostic for Breast Cancer? I'll keep you posted.

Lab Highlights: Breast cancer is the most frequent cancer in women making up to 20% of all tumours diagnosed in women, with 1 million new cases diagnosed every year worldwide (16,000 new cases only in Spain). Worlwide it causes over 350,000 deaths with an increasing tendency. Breast cancer stem cells show the phenotype CD44+/CD24low/-Lin- though only a fraction of this population has the capacity to initiate tumours. Therefore a complete and precise description of the breast cancer stem cells is lacking.

The focus of this laboratory is to identify, isolate and culture breast cancer stem cells from natural breast tumours and compare at the molecular level with normal mammary stem cells. This research involves the stablishment of both in vitro and in vivo functional assays and the molecular characterization (both genomic and proteomic) of breast cancer stem cells to define the mechanisms responsible for its transformed phenotype.