ArticleNature communications2017
Expression of β-globin by cancer cells promotes cell survival during blood-borne dissemination.
Article in Nature communications, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 97 papers.
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Who cites it
97 citing papers in PubMed, 142 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Clinically interpretable extracellular vesicle gene model for Non-Invasive liver cancer diagnosis.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Proteomic identification and histopathological validation of candidate biomarkers CA1, HBB, Torsin A, andFrontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Metabolic adaptations in cancer progression.Physiological reviews · 2026Review
- Interplay of oxidative stress and antioxidant mechanisms in cancer development and progression.Archives of toxicology · 2026Review
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- Urinary Extracellular Vesicle Signatures as Biomarkers in Prostate Cancer Patients.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Circulating Tumor Microenvironment in Metastasis.Cancer research · 2025Review
- Artificial blood-hope and the challenges to combat tumor hypoxia for anti-cancer therapy.Medical & biological engineering & computing · 2025Review
- Cancer brain metastasis: molecular mechanisms and therapeutic strategies.Molecular biomedicine · 2025Review
- Hypoxia favors tumor growth in colorectal cancer in an integrin αDβ1/hemoglobin δ-dependent manner.Life science alliance · 2025Article
- Screening and identification of novel protein markers of early-stage lung cancer and construction and application of screening models.Frontiers in oncology · 2025Article
- A deep learning method to integrate extracelluar miRNA with mRNA for cancer studies.Bioinformatics (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- Survival mechanisms of circulating tumor cells and their implications for cancer treatment.Cancer metastasis reviews · 2024Review
- Matrix stiffness-dependent regulation of immunomodulatory genes in human MSCs is associated with the lncRNA CYTOR.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
37 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
23 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Metastasis-competent circulating tumour cells (CTCs) experience oxidative stress in the bloodstream, but their survival mechanisms are not well defined. Here, comparing single-cell RNA-Seq profiles of CTCs from breast, prostate and lung cancers, we observe consistent induction of β-globin (HBB), but not its partner α-globin (HBA). The tumour-specific origin of HBB is confirmed by sequence polymorphisms within human xenograft-derived CTCs in mouse models. Increased intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) in cultured breast CTCs triggers HBB induction, mediated through the transcriptional regulator KLF4. Depletion of HBB in CTC-derived cultures has minimal effects on primary tumour growth, but it greatly increases apoptosis following ROS exposure, and dramatically reduces CTC-derived lung metastases. These effects are reversed by the anti-oxidant N-Acetyl Cysteine. Conversely, overexpression of HBB is sufficient to suppress intracellular ROS within CTCs. Altogether, these observations suggest that β-globin is selectively deregulated in cancer cells, mediating a cytoprotective effect during blood-borne metastasis.
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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.