Translational control of breast cancer plasticity

Plasticity of neoplasia, whereby cancer cells attain stem-cell-like properties, is required for disease progression and represents a major therapeutic challenge. Hypoxia induces breast cancer cell plasticity and stem-cell-like phenotypes. Although this process is poorly understood, reports demonstrate that hypoxia induces the expression of stemness-factors including NANOG, SNAIL and NODAL. Moreover, both stem-cell-like phenotypes and elevated expression of stemness-factors have been linked to metastatic spread and chemoresistance. With the use of high through-put sequencing, we characterized the gene expression profiles of T47D breast cancer cells under normoxic and hypoxic conditions.