Department of Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, 2-2 Yamadaoka E-2, Suita, Osaka, 565-0871, Japan.
J Hepatobiliary Pancreat Sci. 2012 Nov;19(6):600-5. doi: 10.1007/s00534-012-0543-5.
Cancer is a disease of genetic and epigenetic alterations, which are emphasized as the central mechanisms of tumor progression in the multi-stepwise model. Discovery of rare subpopulations of cancer stem cells (CSCs) has created a new focus in cancer research. The heterogeneity of tumors can be explained with the help of CSCs supported by anti-apoptotic signaling. CSCs mimic normal adult stem cells by demonstrating unique characteristics of self-renewal and pluripotency, and the critical role for tumor growth and resistance to anti-cancer therapy. We found that CD13 was a surface marker for CSCs in human liver cancer cell lines and clinical samples, and that CD13+ CSCs were associated with a hypoxic marker in clinical hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) sample, suggesting that CD13+ CSCs have the critical role in tumor growth and resistance to anti-cancer therapy in liver cancers. In this review article, we update recent findings regarding the involvement of CSCs, especially in HCC.
癌症是一种遗传和表观遗传改变的疾病，这些改变被强调为多步模型中肿瘤进展的核心机制。癌症干细胞（CSC）的稀有亚群的发现为癌症研究创造了新的焦点。CSC 支持的抗细胞凋亡信号有助于解释肿瘤的异质性。CSC 通过表现出自我更新和多能性的独特特征以及对肿瘤生长和抗癌症治疗的抵抗力，模拟正常的成年干细胞。我们发现 CD13 是人肝癌细胞系和临床样本中 CSC 的表面标志物，并且 CD13+ CSC 与临床肝细胞癌（HCC）样本中的低氧标志物相关，这表明 CD13+ CSC 在肝癌的肿瘤生长和对癌症治疗的抵抗力中起关键作用。在这篇综述文章中，我们更新了关于 CSC 参与的最新发现，特别是在 HCC 方面。
