Novel strategies for targeting leukemia stem cells: sounding the death knell for blood cancer

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• 作者：Antonieta Chavez-Gonzalez ; Babak Bakhshinejad ; Katayoon Pakravan…
• 关键词：Cancer stem cells ; Leukemia stem cells ; Blood cancer ; Self renewal ; Tumor relapse ; Targeted therapy
• 刊名：Cellular Oncology
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：40
• 期：1
• 页码：1-20
• 全文大小：
• 刊物主题：Cancer Research; Biomedicine, general; Pathology; Oncology;
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：2211-3436
• 卷排序：40

文摘

BackgroundCancer stem cells (CSCs), also known as tumor-initiating cells (TICs), are characterized by high self-renewal and multi-lineage differentiation capacities. CSCs are thought to play indispensable roles in the initiation, progression and metastasis of many types of cancer. Leukemias are thought to be initiated and maintained by a specific sub-type of CSC, the leukemia stem cell (LSC). An important feature of LSCs is their resistance to standard therapy, which may lead to relapse. Increasing efforts are aimed at developing novel therapeutic strategies that selectively target LSCs, while sparing their normal counterparts and, thus, minimizing adverse treatment-associated side-effects. These LSC targeting therapies aim to eradicate LSCs through affecting mechanisms that control their survival, self-renewal, differentiation, proliferation and cell cycle progression. Some LSC targeting therapies have already been proven successful in pre-clinical studies and they are now being tested in clinical studies, mainly in combination with conventional treatment regimens.