Department of Genetics, Stanley S Scott Cancer Center, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, New Orleans, LA 70112, USA.
Front Biosci (Landmark Ed). 2011 Jan 1;16(5):1927-38. doi: 10.2741/3831.
The lethality of cancer is mainly caused by its properties of metastasis, drug resistance, and subsequent recurrence. Understanding the mechanisms governing these properties and developing novel strategies to overcome them will greatly improve the survival of cancer patients. Recent findings suggest that tumors are comprised of heterogeneous cell populations, and only a small fraction of these are tumorigenic with the ability to self-renew and produce phenotypically diverse tumor cell populations. Cells in this fraction are called tumor-initiating cells (TICs) or cancer stem cells (CSCs). TICs have been identified from many types of cancer. They share several similarities with normal adult stem cells including sphere-forming ability, self-renewability, and expression of stem cell surface markers and transcription factors. TICs have also been proposed to be responsible for cancer metastasis, however, scarce evidence for their metastatic potential has been provided. In this review article, we have attempted to summarize the studies which have examined the metastatic potential of TICs in solid tumors.
癌症的致命性主要是由其转移、耐药和随后复发的特性所导致的。了解这些特性的调控机制，并开发新的策略来克服它们，将极大地提高癌症患者的生存率。最近的研究结果表明，肿瘤由异质性细胞群体组成，只有一小部分具有肿瘤发生能力，能够自我更新并产生表型多样化的肿瘤细胞群体。这些细胞被称为肿瘤起始细胞（TICs）或癌症干细胞（CSCs）。TICs 已从多种类型的癌症中被鉴定出来。它们与正常成体干细胞有几个相似之处，包括球体形成能力、自我更新能力以及干细胞表面标志物和转录因子的表达。TICs 也被认为是癌症转移的原因，然而，关于它们转移潜力的证据很少。在这篇综述文章中，我们试图总结了研究 TICs 在实体瘤中转移潜力的研究。
