Cancer development and progression occurs in concert with alterations in the surrounding stroma. Cancer cells can functionally sculpt their microenvironment through the secretion of various cytokines, chemokines, and other factors. This results in a reprogramming of the surrounding cells, enabling them to play a determinative role in tumor survival and progression. Immune cells are important constituents of the tumor stroma and critically take part in this process. Growing evidence suggests that the innate immune cells (macrophages, neutrophils, dendritic cells, innate lym-phoid cells, myeloid-derived suppressor cells, and natural killer cells) as well as adaptive immune cells (T cells and B cells) contribute to tumor progression when present in the tumor microenvironment (TME). Cross-talk between cancer cells and the proximal immune cells ultimately results in an environment that fosters tumor growth and metastasis. Understanding the nature of this dialog will allow for improved therapeutics that simultaneously target multiple components of the TME, increasing the likelihood of favorable patient outcomes.

Background: The process of malignant transformation, progression and metastasis of melanoma is poorly understood. Gene expression profiling of human cancer has allowed for a unique insight into the genes that are involved in these processes. Thus, we have attempted to utilize this approach through the analysis of a series of primary, non-metastatic cutaneous tumors and metastatic melanoma samples.

Osteopontin (OPN) is a multifunctional cytokine that impacts cell proliferation, survival, drug resistance, invasion, and stem like behavior. Due to its critical involvement in regulating cellular functions, its aberrant expression and/or splicing is functionally responsible for undesirable alterations in disease pathologies, specifically cancer. It is implicated in promoting invasive and metastatic progression of many carcinomas. Due to its autocrine and paracrine activities OPN has been shown to be a crucial mediator of cellular cross talk and an influential factor in the tumor microenvironment. OPN has been implicated as a prognostic and diagnostic marker for several cancer types. It has also been explored as a possible target for treatment. In this article we hope to provide a broad perspective on the importance of OPN in the pathophysiology of cancer.

Breast cancer metastasis suppressor 1 (BRMS1) suppresses metastasis of multiple human and murine cancer cells without inhibiting tumorigenicity. By yeast two-hybrid and co-immunoprecipitation, BRMS1 interacts with retinoblastoma binding protein 1 and at least seven members of the mSin3 histone deacetylase (HDAC) complex in human breast and melanoma cell lines. BRMS1 co-immunoprecipitates enzymatically active HDAC proteins and represses transcription when recruited to a Gal4 promoter in vivo. BRMS1 exists in large mSin3 complex(es) of ϳ1.4 -1.9 MDa, but also forms smaller complexes with HDAC1. Deletion analyses show that the carboxyl-terminal 42 amino acids of BRMS1 are not critical for interaction with much of the mSin3 complex and that BRMS1 appears to have more than one binding point to the complex. These results further show that BRMS1 may participate in transcriptional regulation via interaction with the mSin3⅐HDAC complex and suggest a novel mechanism by which BRMS1 might suppress cancer metastasis.The complex process of cancer cell dissemination and the establishment of secondary foci involves the acquisition of multiple abilities by metastatic cells. For example, blood-borne metastasis requires cells to invade from the primary tumor, enter the circulation, survive transport, arrest at a secondary site, recruit a blood supply, and proliferate at that site (1). The ability to accomplish all of these steps likely involves changes in, and coordinated expression of, a large assortment of genes. Consistent with this notion, several genes, proteins, and pathways have been associated with metastatic progression, including oncogenes, motility factors, and matrix metalloproteinases (1, 2). In addition to metastasis-promoting genes, a new class of molecules called metastasis suppressors has been described (reviewed in Refs. 2-5). By definition, metastasis suppressors inhibit metastasis without blocking primary tumor growth, presumably by inhibiting one or more steps necessary for metastasis. To date, 13 metastasis suppressor genes have been identified that reduce the metastatic ability of cancer cell line(s) in vivo without affecting tumorigenicity, namely breast cancer metastasis suppressor 1 (BRMS1), 1 CRSP3, DRG1, KAI1, KISS1, MKK4, NM23, RhoGDI2, RKIP, SSeCKs, VDUP1, E-cadherin, and TIMPs (reviewed in Refs. 4 and 5).We identified BRMS1 using differential display to compare highly metastatic breast carcinoma cells with related but metastasis-suppressed cells (6). Enforced expression of BRMS1 suppressed metastasis in three animal models, namely human breast (6), murine mammary (7), and human melanoma cells (8). Additionally, BRMS1 mapped to loci in murine (7) and human (6) genomes that had previously been implicated in metastasis control (9). The BRMS1 protein localized to nuclei and restored gap junctional intercellular communication in both breast and melanoma tumor cell lines (8,10,11), but its molecular functions remain to be elucidated.One approach to determine a mechanism of action involves identifying which...