Abstract IA004: Cancer: A tango of miscommunication between oncogenic stem cells and their microenvironment
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Barrier epithelial tissues such as the skin, lung and gut are the first line of defense between our body and the outside world. As such, their stem cells must continually generate and rejuvenate their tissue, but also self-renew to maintain the reservoir of stem cells. When the barrier has been breached, for example by wounding, the stem cells must not only repair the damaged tissue but also call to the immune system to help guard against pathogen entry. All the while the stem cells must protect themselves from a variety of assaults, including not only injury but also mechanical stress, pathogens and allergens that stimulate an inflammatory response. How do epithelial stem cells equip themselves to respond to these different stresses? My laboratory studies the crosstalk that tissue stem cells have with their niche microenvironment and how they protect themselves when upended from their niche in wound repair. We’ve discovered that when stem cells acquire an oncogenic mutation in Ras that sets them on a path to cancer, they hijack these natural mechanisms of immune suppression and tissue regeneration, while bypassing their negative feedback controls. Additionally, they embark upon a miscommunication with their microenvironment that becomes increasingly aberrant during tumor progression. Using high throughput, genetic and biochemical approaches in mice, we’ve dissected the molecular nature of this crosstalk that leads to malignant behavior. Many of the steps in this aberrant epigenetic dialogue are mutated in metastatic cancers with high mutational burden. The ultimate goal is to devise strategies to target cancerous stem cells without affecting their normal tissue counterparts. Citation Format: Elaine Fuchs. Cancer: A tango of miscommunication between oncogenic stem cells and their microenvironment [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference in Cancer Research: The Rise in Early-Onset Cancers—Knowledge Gaps and Research Opportunities; 2025 Dec 10-13; Montreal, QC, Canada. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Clin Cancer Res 2025;31(23_Suppl):Abstract nr IA004.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".