Research progression of CD133 as a marker of cancer stem cells.

More and more evidences support the cancer stem cell (CSC) hypothesis which postulates that CSCs are responsible for tumor initiation metastasis recurrence and resistance to treatments. Therefore they are the targets of antitumor therapy. Sorting CSCs using specific surface markers is the premise of investigating their biological behaviors. Recently CD133 has been used extensively as a marker for the identification of stem cells from normal and cancerous tissues. Moreover CD133- positive (CD133+) tumor cells associate with the self-renewal differentiation potentials signal pathway drug-resistance recurrence and prognosis of tumors. Therefore CD133+ cells could be potential targets of antitumor therapy in the future.