Focal adhesion signaling in breast cancer treatment

Abstract

Understanding the molecular mechanisms of survival and migratory pathways in cancer cells is essential to better comprehending cancer progression, metastasis formation and drug resistance, thereby benefiting the development of novel anticancer treatments. The overall goal of the work is to better understand the role and mechanism of focal adhesion mediated signaling in the control of anticancer drug-related survival signaling of breast tumor cells in vivo as well as the regulation of cell migration of breast tumor cells in vitro. Mainly, we focused on the role of the focal adhesion associated proteins (focal adhesion kinase and paxillin) in cell survival, cytoskeleton reorganization and migration. Moreover, we would like to identify the pattern of C-X-C chemokines and corresponding receptors that mediate the downstream signaling events in tumor cell migration and invasion.