Muthuraman N, Thomas Anitha, Samuel Ram Thomas, Mohankumar K M, Abraham Premila
Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry, Christian Medical College, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India.
Professor, Department of Gynecologic Oncology, Christian Medical College, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India.
J Mother Child. 2025 May 24;29(1):10-19. doi: 10.34763/jmotherandchild.20252901.d-24-00041. eCollection 2025 Feb 1.
The incidence of endometrial cancer is increasing globally. Cancer stem cells are now considered the driving force for tumour recurrence and metastasis. We studied whether the proportion of cancer stem cell population and stemness gene expression differ in type I and type II endometrial cancer.
Type I and type II endometrial tumour tissues were obtained from patients who underwent hysterectomy. The tumour tissue was digested using collagenase, and we established a primary culture. In the primary cultures established from these two types of cancer, we used flow cytometry to measure the proportion of the cancer stem cell population expressing CD 133 and CXCR4 on its surface. We also looked for the expression of genes related to stemness, regulators of stemness, and markers of metastasis in both these cancer types.
We found that the proportion of cancer stem cell population that expresses CD133 and CXCR4 was higher in type II endometrial cancer than in type I endometrial cancer. Also, genes (Nanog, ALDH, EZH2) related to stemness and aberrant transcriptome were found to be upregulated in type II endometrial cancer.
Our study demonstrates that the proportion of stem cells in type 2 endometrial cancer is higher than in type I endometrial cancer. The findings of this study should lead us to investigate with a larger sample size and see if the increase in the stem cell population in type II endometrial cancer may be the reason for its poor prognosis.
子宫内膜癌的发病率在全球范围内呈上升趋势。癌症干细胞现在被认为是肿瘤复发和转移的驱动力。我们研究了I型和II型子宫内膜癌中癌症干细胞群体的比例和干性基因表达是否存在差异。
从接受子宫切除术的患者中获取I型和II型子宫内膜肿瘤组织。使用胶原酶消化肿瘤组织，并建立原代培养。在由这两种癌症建立的原代培养物中，我们使用流式细胞术测量表面表达CD133和CXCR4的癌症干细胞群体的比例。我们还在这两种癌症类型中寻找与干性、干性调节因子和转移标志物相关的基因表达。
我们发现，II型子宫内膜癌中表达CD133和CXCR4的癌症干细胞群体比例高于I型子宫内膜癌。此外，发现与干性和异常转录组相关的基因（Nanog、ALDH、EZH2）在II型子宫内膜癌中上调。
我们的研究表明，II型子宫内膜癌中的干细胞比例高于I型子宫内膜癌。这项研究的结果应促使我们用更大的样本量进行研究，看看II型子宫内膜癌中干细胞群体的增加是否可能是其预后不良的原因。
