Kondo Toru
Laboratory for Cell Lineage Modulation, Center for Developmental Biology, RIKEN, Kobe 650-0047, Japan.
Cancer Biomark. 2007;3(4-5):245-50. doi: 10.3233/cbm-2007-34-508.
Both stem cells and cancer cells are thought to be capable of unlimited proliferation. Moreover, a small number of cancer cells express stem cell markers, including CD133 and ATP-binding cassette transporters, by which the cells can pump out specific fluorescence dyes, such as Hoechst33342, as well as anti-cancer drugs, suggesting that either cancer cells resemble stem cells or cancers contain stem cell-like cancer cells, called "cancer stem cells (CSCs)". Using the common characteristics of tissue-specific stem cells, it was demonstrated that many types of tumors and cancer cell lines contain CSCs, which self-renew, express stem cell markers, and are tumorigenic. It was also shown that CSCs are resistant to anti-cancer drugs and irradiation. Thus CSCs might be a crucial target for the therapy. Because tumors contain CSCs and recruited normal stem cells, both of which contribute to tumorigenesis, it is difficult to separate CSCs from tumors. By contrast, cancer cell lines do not have any contaminating normal stem cells that quickly loose mulitpotentiality and differentiate in normal culture condition, suggesting that cancer cell lines could be an attractive alternative source of cells for CSC research. In this review I summarize the recent progress in CSC research using cancer cell lines.
干细胞和癌细胞都被认为具有无限增殖的能力。此外，少数癌细胞表达干细胞标志物，包括CD133和ATP结合盒转运蛋白，通过这些蛋白细胞可以排出特定的荧光染料，如Hoechst33342，以及抗癌药物，这表明癌细胞要么类似于干细胞，要么癌症中含有类似干细胞的癌细胞，即“癌症干细胞（CSCs）”。利用组织特异性干细胞的共同特征，已证明许多类型的肿瘤和癌细胞系中都含有CSCs，它们能够自我更新、表达干细胞标志物并具有致瘤性。还表明CSCs对抗癌药物和辐射具有抗性。因此，CSCs可能是治疗的关键靶点。由于肿瘤中含有CSCs和募集的正常干细胞，两者都对肿瘤发生有贡献，因此很难将CSCs与肿瘤分离。相比之下，癌细胞系没有任何污染的正常干细胞，这些正常干细胞在正常培养条件下会迅速丧失多能性并分化，这表明癌细胞系可能是CSC研究中一种有吸引力的替代细胞来源。在这篇综述中，我总结了使用癌细胞系进行CSC研究的最新进展。
