ArticlePloS one2017
A Melanoma Lymph Node Metastasis with a Donor-Patient Hybrid Genome following Bone Marrow Transplantation: A Second Case of Leucocyte-Tumor Cell Hybridization in Cancer Metastasis.
Article in PloS one, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed, 57 citations in OpenAlex.
- How Do Cancer Cells Fuse and Why?Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- Implications of Heterotypic Cell Fusion in Cancer.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- A Brief Introduction into the Biological Phenomenon of Cell-Cell Fusion.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- Horizontal transfer of nuclear DNA in transmissible cancer.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Monocyte-cancer cell fusion is mediated by phosphatidylserine-CD36 receptor interaction and induced by ionizing radiation.PloS one · 2025Article
- Cell fusion as a driver of metastasis: re-evaluating an old hypothesis in the age of cancer heterogeneity.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Review
- Cancer-associated macrophage-like cells as a prognostic biomarker in solid tumors.The journal of liquid biopsy · 2024Review
- Quantitative image analysis pipeline for detecting circulating hybrid cells in immunofluorescence images with human-level accuracy.Cytometry. Part A : the journal of the International Society for Analytical Cytology · 2024Article
- Mechanisms of Cell Fusion in Cancer.Results and problems in cell differentiation · 2024Review
- Characterisation of circulating tumor-associated and immune cells in patients with advanced-stage non-small cell lung cancer.Clinical & translational immunology · 2024Article
- The Hallmarks of Circulating Hybrid Cells.Results and problems in cell differentiation · 2024Review
- Intrinsic signalling factors associated with cancer cell-cell fusion.Cell communication and signaling : CCS · 2023Review
- Vascular regulation of disseminated tumor cells during metastatic spread.Biophysics reviews · 2023Review
- You complete me: tumor cell-myeloid cell nuclear fusion as a facilitator of organ-specific metastasis.Frontiers in oncology · 2023Review
- Extracellular Events Involved in Cancer Cell-Cell Fusion.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- Fusion Cell Markers in Circulating Tumor Cells from Patients with High-Grade Ovarian Serous Carcinoma.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Article
- Review
- Generation of Cancer Stem/Initiating Cells by Cell-Cell Fusion.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- Donor-derived urologic cancers after renal transplantation: A retrospective non-randomized scientific analysis.PloS one · 2022Article
- Tumor Hybrid Cells: Nature and Biological Significance.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMetastatic disease is the principal cause of mortality in cancer, yet the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. Macrophage-cancer cell fusion as a cause of metastasis was proposed more than a century ago by German pathologist Prof. Otto Aichel. Since then this theory has been confirmed in numerous animal studies and recently in a patient with metastatic melanoma.
methodsHere we analyzed tumor DNA from a 51-year-old man who, 8 years following an allogeneic BMT from his brother for treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), developed a nodular malignant melanoma on the upper back with spread to an axillary sentinal lymph node. We used laser microdissection to isolate FFPE tumor cells free of leucocytes. They were genotyped using forensic short tandem repeat (STR) length-polymorphisms to distinguish donor and patient genomes. Tumor and pre-transplant blood lymphocyte DNAs were analyzed for donor and patient alleles at 15 autosomal STR loci and the sex chromosomes.
resultsDNA analysis of the primary melanoma and the nodal metastasis exhibit alleles at each STR locus that are consistent with both the patient and donor. The doses vary between these samples indicative of the relative amounts of genomic DNA derived from the patient and donor.
conclusionThe evidence supports fusion and hybridization between donor and patient cells as the initiator of metastasis in this patient. That this phenomenon has now been seen in a second case suggests that fusion is likely to play a significant role for melanoma and other solid tumor metastasis, perhaps leading to new avenues of treatment for this most problematic disease.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.