Olivia C. MacKenzie

TL;DR: Mouse as well as human pancreatic CTCs exhibit a very high expression of stromal-derived extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins, including SPARC, whose knockdown in cancer cells suppresses cell migration and invasiveness, pointing to their contribution of microenvironmental signals for the spread of cancer to distant organs.

TL;DR: The observations suggest that cancer-associated derepression of specific repetitive sequences can promote their RNA-driven genomic expansion, with potential implications on pericentromeric architecture.

TL;DR: RNA sequencing was performed of circulating tumor cells isolated from blood samples of women with metastatic estrogen receptor (ER)+ breast cancer, comparing cases with progression in bone versus visceral organs to identify androgen receptor (AR) signaling in CTCs from women with bone-predominant ER+ breast cancer.

TL;DR: For example, this paper found that the LINE-1 and HERV-H subtypes detected by RNA sequencing and RNA in situ hybridization in colon cancers had distinct expression patterns, which suggested that these repeats are correlated to transcriptional programs marking different biological states.

TL;DR: This work has provided a method to truly understand the key transcriptional programs that differentiate CTCs from their primary tumors on an isogenic mouse background and identified three major CTC clusters, which were all distinct form matched primary tumors as well as from the NB508 cancer cell line.