Abstract 1949: P38MAPK plays a tumor suppressive role through differentiation of ALDHhigh/CD44high tumor iniating cells in primary human lung adenocarcinoma

The p38 MAPK cascade regulates body responses to a wide range of stress stimuli in a context-dependent and tissue-specific manner. The isoform p38alpha (p38) mediates both tumor suppressive and tumor-supportive functions in different cancer models. However, its role in lung cancer is not clear. Since EGFR is frequently mutated in lung adenocarcinomas in non-smoking women and p38 is a downstream target of EGFR signaling, it is possible that p38 plays a tumor-supportive role. Using immunohistochemistry to analyze nuclear activated p38 expression in 90 lung adenocarcinomas, we observed p38 expression was significantly associated with well differentiated compared to poorly-differentiated carcinomas (p Citation Format: Jing Liu, Lai-han Leung, Zhi-jie Xiao, Vicky PC Tin, Maria Pik Wong. P38MAPK plays a tumor suppressive role through differentiation of ALDHhigh/CD44high tumor iniating cells in primary human lung adenocarcinoma. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 1949. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-1949