Disclosed herein are 2 novel long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), TROLL-2 and TROLL-3. It is shown herein that lncRNAs TROLL-2 and TROLL-3, as well as their effector WDR26, are suitable targets for cancer therapies and can be used to make prognostic determinations about a cancer and determine if immune checkpoint inhibitors should be used to treat a cancer.

The present invention provides a novel method for detecting an indicator of T cell lymphoma. The method for detecting an indicator of T cell lymphoma includes the step of detecting acetylated tubulin in a T cell that has been collected from a subject.

High mitochondrial ATP is a metabolic trait that confers hyper-proliferation, sternness, anchorage-independence, anti-oxidant capacity and multi-drug resistance in cancer cells. Under the present approach, intracellular ATP levels may be used as a metabolic biomarker to identify, separate, and purify an aggressive and hyper-proliferative cancer stem cell (“CSC”) phenotype. Further, ATP may be combined with other CSC markers, e.g., CD44 or ALDH-activity, to beneficially fractionate the CSC population into sub-populations. For example, ATP-high/ CD44-high CSC sub-populations showed twice the level of anchorage-independent growth compared to ATP-low/CD44-high CSC sub-populations. Also disclosed are complementary bioinformatic data that implicate mitochondrial ATP synthesis in stemness, metastasis, and the detection of circulating tumor cells (“CTCs”), and a five-member, ATP-related metastasis gene-signature (ABCA2, ATP5F1C, COX20, NDUFA2 and UQCRB). The gene signature of the present approach may be used to identify CSCs having a dramatic increase in cell migration and invasion in vitro capacity, as well as spontaneous metastasis in vivo. The present approach also provides a cellular platform for systematically targeting sternness, multi-drug resistance, and metastasis in cancer cells.

The present disclosure relates to the field of cancer. More particularly, the invention relates to methods of diagnosing and treating cancer, including determining a cancer type thereof. These methods involve the detection of markers in an exosome sample of the subject.

The present invention relates to compositions and methods for identifying, assessing, preventing, and treating melanoma. A variety of PD-L1 isoform biomarkers are provided, wherein alterations in the copy number of one or more of the biomarkers and/or alterations in the amount, structure, and/or activity of one or more of the biomarkers is associated with melanoma status.

Ex vivo determination of increased tumor immunogenicity of a tumor biopsy is used as a guide to identify immunotherapy of a tumor in a patient. Most preferably, the ex vivo tests will include exposure of biopsy samples to stress conditions to produce pretreated tumor cells that are then assayed with immune competent cells for increased activation or activity. Test conditions include exposure of the biopsy samples to immune stimulatory compositions, antibodies against neoepitopes, and/or modified cells, and an increase of immunogenicity is preferably determined by their exposure to T cells and/or NK cells.

Isolated antibodies and immunoconjugates that specifically bind Frizzled receptor (FZD) 4 cysteine rich domain (CRD) comprising a light chain variable region and a heavy chain variable region, the heavy chain variable region comprising complementarity determining regions CDR-H1, CDR-H2 and CDR-H3, the light chain variable region comprising complementarity determining region CDR-L1, CDR-L2 and CDR-L3, and with the amino acid sequences of said CDRs comprising or consisting of sequences selected from sequences in Table 1a or 3a. Methods of using the antibodies and immunoconjugates are also provided.

The present invention relates to an indirect three-dimensional co-culture. The indirect co-culture may comprise bone marrow niche cells, tumor cells and a culture medium. The bone marrow niche cells and the tumor cells may be incubated in the culture medium without direct contact between the bone marrow niche cells and the tumor cells. The tumor cells may be dormant or reactivated. Also provided are a method for preparing the indirect co-culture and a method for screening for an agent capable of inhibiting reactivation of dormant tumor cells or promoting dormancy of proliferating tumor cells.

This invention relates to agents that are inhibitors or activators of variant forms of endogenous proteins and novel methods of identifying such variants. Of particular interest are inhibitors and activators of endogenous protein variants, encoded by genes which have mutated, which variants often arise or are at least first identified as having arisen following exposure to a chemical agent which is known to be an inhibitor or activator of the corresponding unmutated endogenous protein.

A method of assessing a possibility of cancerization including culturing a cell structure including normal cells and having a vascular network structure in a presence of a biological specimen from a subject, and assessing a possibility of cancerization in the subject based on a state of vessels in the cell structure after the culturing. The biological specimen is a body fluid specimen from the subject, a cell extract of cells from the subject, or a culture supernatant of cells from the subject, and the possibility of cancerization is assessed as high in the subject when a number of cells forming the vessels in the cell structure is larger than a number of cells cultured in an absence of the body fluid specimen, or when the vascular network structure in the cell structure extends.