Department of Inflammation and Immunology, Humanitas Clinical and Research Center-IRCCS-, via Manzoni 56, 20089 Rozzano (MI), Italy.
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Eastern Piedmont, A. Avogadro, via Bovio 6, 28100 Novara, Italy.
Int J Mol Sci. 2020 May 9;21(9):3352. doi: 10.3390/ijms21093352.
Even if cancer stem cells (CSCs) represent only a small proportion of the tumor mass, they significantly account for tumor maintenance, resistance to therapies, relapse and metastatic spread, due to their increased capacity of self-renewal, multipotency, tumorigenicity and quiescence. Emerging evidence suggests that the immune contexture within the tumor microenvironment (TME) determines both the response to therapy and the clinical outcome. In this context, CSCs acquire immune evasion skills by editing immune cell functions and sculpting the immunosuppressive landscape of TME. Reciprocally, infiltrating immune cells influence CSCs self-renewal, tumorigenicity and metastasis. In this review, we summarize the immunomodulatory properties of CSCs, as well as the impact of innate immune cells on cancer cells stemness in the different phases of cancer immunoediting process and neoplastic progression.
即使癌症干细胞 (CSCs) 仅占肿瘤质量的一小部分，但由于其自我更新、多能性、致瘤性和静止性的增加，它们在很大程度上导致了肿瘤的维持、对治疗的耐药性、复发和转移扩散。新出现的证据表明，肿瘤微环境 (TME) 中的免疫结构决定了对治疗的反应和临床结果。在这种情况下，CSCs 通过编辑免疫细胞功能和塑造 TME 的免疫抑制景观来获得免疫逃逸能力。相反，浸润的免疫细胞影响 CSCs 的自我更新、致瘤性和转移。在这篇综述中，我们总结了 CSCs 的免疫调节特性，以及固有免疫细胞对癌症干细胞在癌症免疫编辑过程和肿瘤进展的不同阶段的干性的影响。
