Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 21, 2017; 23(19): 3440-3448
Published online May 21, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i19.3440
Role of AXL in invasion and drug resistance of colon and breast cancer cells and its association with p53 alterations
Wael M Abdel-Rahman, Noura A Al-khayyal, Vidhya A Nair, S R Aravind, Maha Saber-Ayad
Wael M Abdel-Rahman, Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences, College of Health Sciences and Sharjah Institute for Medical Research, University of Sharjah, Sharjah 27272, United Arab Emirates
Noura A Al-khayyal, College of Medicine and Sharjah Institute for Medical Research, University of Sharjah, Sharjah 27272, United Arab Emirates
Vidhya A Nair, S R Aravind, Environment and Cancer Research Group, Sharjah Institute for Medical Research, University of Sharjah, Sharjah 27272, United Arab Emirates
Maha Saber-Ayad, Department of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, and Sharjah Institute for medical Research, University of Sharjah, Sharjah, Cairo University, Cairo 11523, Egypt
Author contributions: Abdel-Rahman WM supported the study, designed and performed experiments, provided study material, analyzed and interpreted the data and wrote the manuscript; Al-khayyal NA developed the ideas, performed experiments and contributed to data analysis and write up; Nair VA and Aravind SR performed experiments. Saber-Ayad M contributed to some lab work, provided critical insights and contributed to data analysis and write up; all authors revised/endorsed the final draft.
Supported by Terry Fox Foundation for Cancer Research.
Institutional review board statement: No patients or patient derived samples were involved in this study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Data sharing statement: All relevant data were presented in the manuscript. Further information is available from the corresponding author.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Wael M Abdel-Rahman, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, College of Health Sciences and Sharjah Institute for Medical Research, University of Sharjah, University City Road, Sharjah 27272, United Arab Emirates. whassan@sharjah.ac.ae
Telephone: +97-165-057556 Fax: +97-165-057515
Received: December 27, 2016
Peer-review started: December 28, 2016
First decision: February 10, 2017
Revised: March 11, 2017
Accepted: April 21, 2017
Article in press: April 21, 2017
Published online: May 21, 2017
Processing time: 143 Days and 14.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: AXL receptor tyrosine kinase (AXL) is emerging as an attractive molecular target in cancer therapy. We showed that it is regulated by TP53 in colon and breast cancer cells, and it contributes to epithelial to mesenchymal transition and response to therapy in these tumors. We also showed that it could be linked to other carcinogenic pathways, such as the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway in colorectal cancer. These interactions should be considered carefully when designing AXL based therapy, because AXL could trigger the emergence of aggressive clones after inappropriate therapy.