Department of Dermatology and Wound Healing, School of Medicine Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK.
Exp Dermatol. 2012 Aug;21(8):576-80. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0625.2012.01533.x.
Carcinomas, cancers of epithelial tissues, are the commonest malignancies and cause the greatest cancer mortality worldwide. Among these, the incidence of keratinocyte-derived non-melanoma skin cancers (NMSC), by far the greatest, is increasing rapidly. Yet despite access to tumor tissue, acceptance of human NMSC as a model carcinoma has been hindered by the lack of a reliable xenograft model. Instead, we have relied on the murine two-step carcinogenesis protocol as a reproducible squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) model, but this differs from their human counterpart in cause, site, genetic basis and biological behaviour. By xeno-engraftment of primary human SCC, we were recently successful in demonstrating the presence of primary human SCC cancer stem cells or tumor-initiating cells. These findings once more align the study human SCC as the archetypal carcinoma model. In this review, we describe the evidence for the existence of tumor-initiating cells, with emphasis on skin cancer, limiting our discussions to primary human cancer studies where possible.
癌，即上皮组织来源的癌症，是最常见的恶性肿瘤，也是全球范围内导致癌症死亡的主要原因。在这些癌症中，发病率极高的角蛋白细胞来源的非黑色素瘤皮肤癌（NMSC）正在迅速增加。尽管可以获得肿瘤组织，但由于缺乏可靠的异种移植物模型，人类 NMSC 作为一种典型的癌前病变模型一直难以被接受。相反，我们一直依赖于鼠两步致癌发生协议作为一种可重现的鳞状细胞癌（SCC）模型，但由于其发病原因、部位、遗传基础和生物学行为不同，与人类 SCC 并不相同。通过对原发性人类 SCC 的异种移植，我们最近成功地证明了原发性人类 SCC 癌症干细胞或肿瘤起始细胞的存在。这些发现再次将人类 SCC 的研究作为典型的癌前病变模型。在这篇综述中，我们描述了存在肿瘤起始细胞的证据，重点是皮肤癌，并尽可能将讨论限制在原发性人类癌症研究范围内。
