Szostakowska-Rodzoś Małgorzata, Fabisiewicz Anna, Myśliwy Izabella, Jagiełło-Gruszfeld Agnieszka, Konieczna Aleksandra, Grzybowska Ewa A
Department of Molecular and Translational Oncology, Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology, Roentgena 5, 02-781, Warsaw, Poland.
Oncological Clinic, Oncological Mazovian Hospital, Warsaw, Poland.
Open Med (Wars). 2025 Aug 22;20(1):20251265. doi: 10.1515/med-2025-1265. eCollection 2025.
Recent studies have highlighted that one of the main drivers for metastatic formation and resistance to the therapy are circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and cancer stem-like cells (CSCs). Measuring the CTCs has emerged as a non-invasive procedure for selecting the patients with higher risk of progression/relapse. However, still there are no methods enabling the identification of stem-like phenotype of the CTCs.
The image-based method was used for the identification of the circulating cancer stem-like cells (CCSCs) in metastatic breast cancer patients. The method was optimized using the CSCs established in the mammosphere culture of MCF-7 cells. Next the protocol was implemented to identify the CCSCs in samples collected from 60 patients.
The recovery ratio for CCSCs identification using the established method was ∼60%. The CCSCs were identified as rare events accruing only in 2 patients out of 60, who participated in the study. Interestingly, the CCSCs were found only in CTC clusters. The analysis of SOX2 expression in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded material, revealed that the SOX2 expression was present in primary tumor samples.
The CCSCs presence was found to be a very rare event. The obtained results suggest that the CCSCs are mainly present in CTC clusters and stem-like reprograming of the cancer cells might occur early, in the primary tumor.
最近的研究强调，转移形成和治疗耐药的主要驱动因素之一是循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）和癌症干细胞样细胞（CSC）。检测CTC已成为一种用于选择进展/复发风险较高患者的非侵入性方法。然而，仍然没有能够鉴定CTC干细胞样表型的方法。
采用基于图像的方法鉴定转移性乳腺癌患者中的循环癌症干细胞样细胞（CCSC）。该方法使用在MCF-7细胞的乳腺球培养中建立的CSC进行优化。接下来，该方案被用于鉴定从60名患者收集的样本中的CCSC。
使用既定方法鉴定CCSC的回收率约为60%。CCSC被鉴定为罕见事件，仅在参与研究的60名患者中的2名患者中出现。有趣的是，仅在CTC簇中发现了CCSC。对福尔马林固定、石蜡包埋材料中SOX2表达的分析表明，SOX2表达存在于原发性肿瘤样本中。
发现CCSC的存在是非常罕见的事件。获得的结果表明，CCSC主要存在于CTC簇中，癌细胞的干细胞样重编程可能在原发性肿瘤中早期发生。
