Profiling the Behavior of Distinct Populations of Head and Neck Cancer Stem Cells

Cancers

Luciana O. Almeida¹  Douglas M. Guimar฾s¹  Cristiane H. Squarize¹  Rogerio M. Castilho¹ 

[1] Laboratory of Epithelial Biology, University of Michigan School of Dentistry, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA;

关键词: HNSCC;    CSC;    cancer initiating cells;    spheres;    holoclones;    meroclones;    paraclones;    ALDH;    BMI-1;    histone;   

DOI  :  10.3390/cancers8010007

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are a subpopulation of tumor cells endowed with self-renewal properties and the capacity to dynamically adapt to physiological changes that occur in the tumor microenvironment. CSCs play a central role in resistance to therapy and long-term disease recurrence. Better characterization and understanding of the available in vitro tools to study the biology of CSCs will improve our knowledge of the processes underlying tumor response to therapy, and will help in the screening and development of novel strategies targeting CSCs. We investigated the behavior of different populations of head and neck CSCs grown under ultra-low adhesion conditions. We found that invasion and adhesion differ among tumorsphere subtypes (holospheres, merospheres and paraspheres), and their tumor cell progeny also harbor distinct self-renewal and clonogenic potentials. Furthermore, holospheres contained higher numbers of head and neck CSCs, as detected by the CD44 cancer stem cell marker and aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) enzymatic activity. In addition, holospheres showed reduced proliferation (Ki67), hypoacetylation of histones, and increased expression of the BMI-1 epithelial stem cell marker, suggesting activation of stem cell programs. Collectively, our results suggest that holospheres enrich a specific population of CSCs with enhanced “stemness” and invasive potential.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.