Thesis supervisor: Tamás Kőszegi
Location of studies (in Hungarian): PTE ÁOK Abbreviation of location of studies: ÁOK
Description of the research topic:
The most frequent cause of mortality in malignant diseases is metastasis formation by hematogenic or lymphogenic routes. A small part of tumor cells that somehow get into the peripheral circulation are similar to the normal stem cells therefore they are called cancer stem cells (CSCs). CSCs may be isolated or cultured from peripheral blood and they form characteristic spheroid colonies. To our present knowledge, CSCs are responsible for tumor invasivity, metastasis formation and late relapse. During the planned research, CSCs will be isolated from blood samples of patients suffering from epithelial malignancies and then they will be cultured under special circumstances which enable CSCs to outgrow normal cells and to form colonies. We try to find correlation between the number of colonies and the grade of the tumors. Viability of the cultured CSCs will be studied by luminescent methods and cell surface markers analyzed by fluorescence microscopy. Growth properties of the cells will be followed by 3D cell culturing technique, co-culturing them with fibroblasts or other matrices. Diffusion characteristics in the 3D cultures will be examined by fluorescent probes and by application of fluorescent doxorubicin, uptake and cytotoxicity of the drug will be measured. We plan to characterize the diagnostic potential of CSCs and also to assess the predictive value of the method in regard of metastasis formation.
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