The present inventors show that cannibal cells can undergo senescence after entosis in vivo and that the tumor suppressive protein p53 act as a repressor of this phenomenon. They therefore propose new tools to study the molecular pathways involved in the cannibalism process, for example by measuring the expression levels of p53 or splice variants thereof (such as Δ133TP53, TP53β, TP53γ or Δ40TP53), the release of extracellular ATP or purinergic P2Y2 receptor activity. The present inventors also demonstrated that the detection of senescent cannibal cells in breast adenocarcinoma obtained from patients treated with neo-adjuvant therapy positively correlates with good patient's response to treatment. Altogether, these results provide the first evidence that detection of cellular cannibalism and senescence simultaneously in tumors helps for the diagnosis of disease outcomes and for the prediction of treatment efficiency against cancer diseases.
本发明者发现,食人细胞在体内凋亡后会发生衰老,而肿瘤抑制蛋白 p53 是这一现象的抑制因子。因此,他们提出了研究食人过程中涉及的分子途径的新工具,例如通过测量 p53 或其剪接变体(如 Δ133TP53、TP53β、TP53γ 或 Δ40TP53)的表达
水平、细胞外
ATP 的释放或
嘌呤能 P2Y2 受体的活性。本发明者还证明,从接受新辅助治疗的患者身上获取的乳腺癌中检测到衰老的食人细胞与患者对治疗的良好反应呈正相关。总之,这些结果首次证明,同时检测肿瘤中的食人细胞和衰老细胞有助于诊断疾病结果和预测对癌症疾病的治疗效果。