Nurwidya Fariz, Murakami Akiko, Takahashi Fumiyuki, Takahashi Kazuhisa
Department of Respiratory Medicine, Juntendo University School of Medicine, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
Asia Pac J Clin Oncol. 2012 Sep;8(3):217-22. doi: 10.1111/j.1743-7563.2012.01550.x. Epub 2012 May 21.
The concept of cancer stem cells (CSC) has drawn great attention from researchers in both molecular and clinical fields as has brought a new perspective to the way we manage cancer. CSC have several characteristics that are shared by the properties of normal stem cells, such as differentiation, self-renewal and homeostatic control. However, CSC have the capacity to both divide and expand the CSC pool and to differentiate into heterogeneous non-tumorigenic cancer cells. Even more, CSC have an inherent high resistance to chemotherapeutic agents that leads to recurrence and poor long-term survival, especially in lung cancer patients. CSC-targeting agents are now undergoing in vitro and in vivo studies, some of which have provided promising results for further clinical studies setting. In this article we review the concept of CSC from the perspective of tumor biology, including the origin of CSC and its biomarkers. As lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, we focus on the properties and clinical implications of lung CSC.
癌症干细胞（CSC）的概念引起了分子领域和临床领域研究人员的极大关注，它为我们治疗癌症的方式带来了新的视角。CSC具有一些与正常干细胞特性相同的特征，如分化、自我更新和稳态控制。然而，CSC有能力分裂并扩大CSC库，还能分化成异质性的非致瘤性癌细胞。更重要的是，CSC对化疗药物具有内在的高抗性，这会导致复发和较差的长期生存率，尤其是在肺癌患者中。针对CSC的药物目前正在进行体外和体内研究，其中一些研究为进一步的临床研究提供了有希望的结果。在本文中，我们从肿瘤生物学的角度回顾CSC的概念，包括CSC的起源及其生物标志物。由于肺癌是全球癌症相关死亡的主要原因，我们重点关注肺CSC的特性及其临床意义。
