Key Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology, Institute of Health Sciences, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences (SIBS), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine (SJTU-SM), 225 Chong-Qing South Road, Shanghai 200025, China ; Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
Biomed Res Int. 2013;2013:510905. doi: 10.1155/2013/510905. Epub 2013 Oct 8.
Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are resistant to chemotherapy and are ability to regenerate cancer cell populations, thus attracting much attention in cancer research. In this report, we first demonstrated that sphere cells from ovarian cancer cell line A2780 shared many features of CSCs, such as resistance to cisplatin and able to initiate tumors in an efficient manner. Then, we conducted cDNA microarray analysis on spheres from ovarian A2780 cells, and from breast MCF7 and SUM159 cells, and found that molecular pathways underlying spheres from these cancer cell lines were similar to a large extent, suggesting that similar mechanisms are involved in the genesis of CSCs in both ovarian and breast cancer types. In addition, we showed that spheres from these cancer types were highly sensitive to fenretinide, a stimulus of oxidative stress-mediated apoptosis in cancer cells. Thus, our results not only provide important insights into mechanisms underlying CSCs in ovarian and breast cancer, but also lead to the development of more sophisticated protocols of cancer therapy in near future.
癌症干细胞（CSCs）对化疗有抵抗力，并且能够再生癌细胞群体，因此在癌症研究中引起了广泛关注。在本报告中，我们首先证明了来自卵巢癌细胞系 A2780 的球体细胞具有 CSCs 的许多特征，例如对顺铂的耐药性，并且能够以有效的方式引发肿瘤。然后，我们对来自卵巢 A2780 细胞、乳腺 MCF7 和 SUM159 细胞的球体进行了 cDNA 微阵列分析，发现这些癌细胞系球体所涉及的分子途径在很大程度上相似，这表明在卵巢癌和乳腺癌中，CSC 的发生涉及类似的机制。此外，我们还表明，来自这些癌症类型的球体对芬维 A 非常敏感，芬维 A 是一种刺激癌细胞中氧化应激介导的细胞凋亡的物质。因此，我们的研究结果不仅为卵巢癌和乳腺癌中 CSCs 的机制提供了重要的见解，而且为未来更复杂的癌症治疗方案的发展提供了依据。
