About the Project
Cancer stem cells initiate, sustain the prevalence, and resistance to therapy of skin squamous cell carcinomas. It is well acknowledged that cancer stem cells self-renewal and clonal growth is governed by genetic mutations, but also by complex interactions between cancer stem cells and the microenvironment. Genetic therapy is difficult to achieve in clinical settings, therefore, targeting cells of the supportive tumor microenvironment is a promising advance to eradicate skin squamous cell carcinomas.
Using mouse models of skin squamous cell carcinomas, our previous basic research results uncovered the existence of a direct crosstalk between skin cancer stem cells and tumor-associated macrophages (TAM) via Wnt signaling. Interestingly, we observed that Wnt regulated the expression of different receptors. The CApACITY project expands this basic research into a translational perspective, to explore the potential of cancer stem cells receptors as therapeutic targets for human squamous cell carcinomas.