CD44 is a polymorphic family of cell surface proteoglycans and glycoproteins implicated in cell-cell and cell-matrix adhesion interactions, cell migration, and tumor metastasis.
Expression of CD44 splice variants containing epitopes encoded by exon v6 in primary tumors and pelvic lymph node metastases of cervical cancer patients is consistent with a prominent role of CD44 in the process of metastasis formation.
CD44 is the transmembrane adhesion receptor for Hyaluronan (HA) and plays a central role in the remodeling and degradation of HA that leads to cell migration, as well as to cancer invasion and metastasis.
Expression of none of the CD44 variant epitopes was found to be positively correlated with tumour progression or with colorectal tumour metastasis to the liver, results which are inconsistent with a role for CD44 variants as indicators of colonic cancer progression.
Thus, up-regulation of CD44 represents a crucial event in the development of metastasis, recurrence, and drug resistance to current treatments in ovarian cancer.
Additionally, growing evidence suggests that breast cancer cells that do successfully metastasize have a stem-like phenotype including high activity of aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) and/or a CD44+CD24- phenotype.
Importantly, meta-analysis of 19 Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases of breast cancer implicated that patients with higher DACH1 expression had prolonged time to death, recurrence and metastasis, while CD44 was a promising biomarker predicting worse overall survival (OS) and metastasis-free survival (MFS).
We hypothesize that a developed cancer-targeted delivery system that combines CD44 siRNA with paclitaxel would successfully deliver its payload inside cancer cells, effectively induce cell death, and prevent metastases.
CD74 and CD44 were observed to accumulate in cytoplasmic compartments, suggesting they associate with each other to facilitate tumour growth and metastasis.
Since the CD44 variant 6(v6) molecule has been noted as a marker for tumor metastasis and prognosis in several tumors, we examined whether or not v6 is a useful marker for evaluating the prognosis of pancreatic cancer patients.
These findings support the thesis of the role of CD44s glycoprotein in the invasive growth potential of neoplastic cells and suggest that its expression could be taken into consideration in the therapeutic approaches targeting metastases.
To detect the expression of CD44 correlated with the ability of micro-metastasis in peripheral blood and bone marrow of patients with gastric cancer and to deduce its clinical significance.
Three of these genes (KAI1, CD44 and MAPK kinase 4) act as metastasis suppressor genes of prostate cancer, while the remainder have yet to be tested in this cancer type.