Terry Fox Laboratory, British Columbia Cancer Agency and the University of British Columbia, 675 West 10th Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia, V5Z 1L3, Canada.
Nat Rev Cancer. 2012 Jan 12;12(2):133-43. doi: 10.1038/nrc3184.
The cancer stem cell (CSC) concept derives from the fact that cancers are dysregulated tissue clones whose continued propagation is vested in a biologically distinct subset of cells that are typically rare. This idea is not new, but has recently gained prominence because of advances in defining normal tissue hierarchies, a greater appreciation of the multistep nature of oncogenesis and improved methods to propagate primary human cancers in immunodeficient mice. As a result we have obtained new insights into why the CSC concept is not universally applicable, as well as a new basis for understanding the complex evolution, phenotypic heterogeneity and therapeutic challenges of many human cancers.
癌症干细胞（CSC）的概念来源于这样一个事实，即癌症是失调的组织克隆，其持续增殖依赖于通常很少的生物学上不同的细胞亚群。这个概念并不新鲜，但最近由于定义正常组织层次结构的进展、对肿瘤发生的多步骤性质的认识的提高以及在免疫缺陷小鼠中繁殖原发性人类癌症的改进方法，这一概念得到了广泛关注。因此，我们对为什么 CSC 概念不是普遍适用的有了新的认识，以及对许多人类癌症的复杂演变、表型异质性和治疗挑战的新的理解基础。
