To better understand breast cancer metastatic cell seeding, we have employed multiphoton microscopy and a vacuum stabilized window which eliminates the need for complex registration software, video rate microscopy or specialized gating electronics to observe the initial steps of tumor cell seeding within the living, breathing lung. We observe that upon arrival to the lung, tumor cells are found exclusively in capillary vessels, completely fill their volume and display an initial high level of protrusive activity that dramatically reduces over time. Further, we observe a concomitant increase in positional stability during this same period. We employ several techniques accessible to most imaging labs for optimizing signal to noise and resolution which enable us to report the first direct observation, with subcellular resolution, of the arrival, proliferation, and motility of metastatic tumor cells within the lung.

We describe the discovery of an agonist of the nuclear receptor NR2F1 that specifically activates dormancy programs in malignant cells. The agonist led to a self-regulated increase in NR2F1 mRNA and protein and downstream transcription of a novel dormancy program. This program led to growth arrest of an HNSCC PDX line, human cell lines, and patient-derived organoids in 3D cultures and in vivo. This effect was lost when NR2F1 was knocked out by CRISPR-Cas9. RNA sequencing revealed that agonist treatment induces transcriptional changes associated with inhibition of cell cycle progression and mTOR signaling, metastasis suppression, and induction of a neural crest lineage program. In mice, agonist treatment resulted in inhibition of lung HNSCC metastasis, even after cessation of the treatment, where disseminated tumor cells displayed an NR2F1hi/p27hi/Ki-67lo/p-S6lo phenotype and remained in a dormant single-cell state. Our work provides proof of principle supporting the use of NR2F1 agonists to induce dormancy as a therapeutic strategy to prevent metastasis.

Neisseria gonorrhoeae is a gram-negative diplococcus that in human beings produces gonorrhea. Much clinical evidence has led to the conclusion that gonococcus has important mechanisms to evade host immune functions; however, these mechanisms are only now beginning to be elucidated. In this study, we determined that the BALB/c mouse is a good animal model to study gonococcus infection and examined the immune response against the bacteria. We determined that after intravaginal inoculation of mice with Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacteria reached and invaded the upper female reproductive tissues and elicited a T-cellspecific immune response associated with a very weak humoral response, altogether resembling gonococcus infection and disease in women. Remarkably, in the draining lymph nodes of the genital tracts of infected mice, we found an increase of regulatory T lymphocytes, namely, transforming growth factor ␤1-positive CD4 ؉ T cells and CD4؉ CD25 ؉ Foxp3 ؉ T cells. Altogether, results indicate that N. gonorrhoeae induces regulatory T cells, which might be related to the local survival of the pathogen and the establishment of a chronic asymptomatic infection.

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