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Targeting Cancer Stem Cell Propagation With Palbociclib, A Cdk4/6 Inhibitor: Telomerase Drives Tumor Cell Heterogeneity., Gloria Bonuccelli, Maria Peiris-Pages, Bela Ozsvari, Ubaldo E. Martinez-Outshoorn, Federica Sotgia, Michael P Lisanti

Department of Medical Oncology Faculty Papers

In this report, we systematically examined the role of telomerase activity in lung and ovarian cancer stem cell (CSC) propagation. For this purpose, we indirectly gauged telomerase activity, by linking the hTERT-promoter to eGFP. Using lung (A549) and ovarian (SKOV3) cancer cells, transduced with the hTERT-GFP reporter, we then employed GFP-expression levels to fractionate these cell lines into GFP-high and GFP-low populations. We functionally compared the phenotype of these GFP-high and GFP-low populations. More specifically, we now show that the cancer cells with higher telomerase activity (GFP-high) are more energetically activated, with increased mitochondrial mass and function, as well as …