Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts Support Lung Cancer Stemness through Paracrine IGF-II/IGF1R/Nanog Signaling

The CLS1/CAF co-culture maintained the cancer stemness. This cancer stemness was lost when the CAF feeder cells were removed during passaging. To investigate the specific signaling pathways and markers of lung CSCs, we analyzed the gene expression profile of the CLS1 sphere after CLS1/CAF co-culture and compared this profile with that obtained for CLS1 cells cultured without feeder cells through different passages (CLS1 p3, p6, and p14) and CLF1 CLS1 sphere generated by co-culture with CAF and remove CAF to mimic cancer cell differentiation. Four time points of the CLS1 after co-culture with CAF have been collected for microarray analysis:CLS1-2 p.3, p.6, p.8, p.14. We tried to compare theCLS1 sphere-regulated gene expression profiles with the CLS1-2 p.3, p.6, p.8, p.14 and CLF1 to identify the possible cross talk mechanisms of CLF1 and CLS1 and the signaling pathways that maintain stem cell properties.