Yeo Syn Kok, Guan Jun-Lin
Department of Cancer Biology, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH 45267, USA.
Department of Cancer Biology, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH 45267, USA.
Trends Cancer. 2017 Nov;3(11):753-760. doi: 10.1016/j.trecan.2017.09.001. Epub 2017 Oct 24.
Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease, and stratification of tumors is paramount to achieve better clinical outcomes. While it is common to stratify and treat breast tumors as a single entity, insights from studies on intratumoral heterogeneity and cancer stem cells raise the possibility that multiple breast cancer subtypes may coexist within a tumor. A role for plasticity in driving dynamic conversions between breast cancer subtypes is proposed, and the clinical implications include a need for combinatorial therapeutic strategies that account for the discrete disease entities and their plasticity. Accordingly, the advent of single-cell technologies will be crucial in enabling the diagnosis and stratification of distinct disease subtypes down to the cellular level.
乳腺癌是一种异质性疾病，对肿瘤进行分层对于实现更好的临床结果至关重要。虽然将乳腺肿瘤作为一个单一实体进行分层和治疗很常见，但对肿瘤内异质性和癌症干细胞的研究见解提出了一种可能性，即肿瘤内可能共存多种乳腺癌亚型。有人提出可塑性在驱动乳腺癌亚型之间的动态转化中发挥作用，其临床意义包括需要采用组合治疗策略，以考虑到不同的疾病实体及其可塑性。因此，单细胞技术的出现对于在细胞水平上实现对不同疾病亚型的诊断和分层至关重要。
