Clinical Case Reports

Biography

Biography: Serag Bensar

Abstract

Hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) are playing a role in the invasiveness of cancer cells through transdifferention into myofibroblast-like cells, which are characterized by the expression of alpha-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA). In order to explore whether the HT-29 metastatic colon cancer cell line and Colo-741 non-metastatic colon cancer cell line effect on HSCs via its activation, transdifferentiation and survival. The stellate cells have been isolated and identified by vitamin A autofluorescence, Oil red O lipid staining and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) expression. Following an identification, the duration of qHSC activation was determined using immunocytochemistry (ICC) via sequential staining of α-SMA and Oil red O at days 1, 3 and 5. ICC was conducted to quantitatively examine the expression of α-SMA in the metastatic and non-metastatic colon cancer cell lines. α-SMA expression was observed for a period of 10 days. We found the expression of α-SMA at day 1 in the HT-29 co-culture, which increased consistently throughout the duration of the experiment. In contrast, it was observed only on days 7 and 10 in the Colo-741 co-culture. The Ki-67 proliferation assay was investigated on day 1 of qHSCs co-culture with HT-29 or Colo-741 conditioned medium that determine the stellate cells had proliferated in the HT-29 conditioned medium, whereas the Colo-741 conditioned medium did not show any changes. In addition, caspase-cleaved fragment of cytokeratin (CK)-18 in the qHSCs of these co-cultures noted that Colo-741 were found to be significantly proapoptotic. These findings show further information for a positive role of stellate cells in the metastatic process instead of simply acting to provide a pseudocapsule between the tumour and liver parenchyma, as previously thought