Cover Caption

Abstract

Cancer cells coax the surrounding cells into becoming accessories on their mission to invade and disseminate. The importance of stromal cells to the survival of cancer cells is an area of intense research. In this month's issue of Cancer Biology & Therapy, Mercier and colleagues look at the differences between cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs, taken from breast cancer patients) and normal fibroblasts from unaffected areas of mammary glands of the same patients. They find that caveolin-1 is downregulated in the CAFs from 8 of 11 patients they surveyed. The decrease in Cav-1 resulted in increased proliferation and gene expression changes. On the cover of this month's issue of Cancer Biology & Therapy, the H&E staining of a section of a tumor from a breast cancer patient shows the numerous CAFs present as indicated by the hematoxylin stained nuclei. To learn more about the changes between normal fibroblasts and CAFs, see the article by Mercier and colleagues.