Study of epithelial-mesenchymal transition induced by POU1F1 in normal breast cells

The failure of treatment to deal with intractable cancer cells has raised the question of whether there is a special population of cells in tumor heterogeneity that exhibit resistant phenotypes that favor micrometastasis and have the potential to cause recurrence. One of the current points of view is that most solid cancers, including breast cancer, are stem cell diseases, and that these CSCs are critical to dissemination and metastasis. Our objective is to study the role of POU1F1 in breast cancer cell plasticity. Specifically, we will evaluate whether POU1F1 could modify the phenotype of normal -epithelial- cells to induce its transformation into CSCs/BCSCs Overall design: RNA-seq profiling of HMEC control and HMEC with POU1F1 overexpression