肿瘤干细胞和上皮-间质转化之间的关系及其在肿瘤侵袭转移中的作用

摘要

Cancer stem cells(CSCs) are cells that possess the capacity of self-renewal and maintain the capacity of tumor-initiating through differentiation into the heterogeneous lineages of cancer cells in the tumor.Recent studies have shown that CSCs are the original cells of tumor recurrence and metastasis after therapy.Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition(EMT) could produce cells with similar molecular characteris-tics as CSCs,besides,EMT is correlated with the invasion and metastasis of tumors,and is the critical process that boots early tumors to evolve into the invasive tumors.Therefore,exploiting the therapeautic strategies to stop tumor cells from developing into EMT will not only extinguish the “seeds” of recurrence of tumors in the source but also inhibit the early tumors from evolving into invasive phenotype ,so as to prevent and treat the recurrence of malignant tumors effectively.%肿瘤干细胞（ CSCs）是肿瘤中能通过分化成异源的癌细胞系而具有自我更新并保持肿瘤启动能力的细胞。近年来研究表明， CSCs 是肿瘤治疗后复发转移的起源细胞。上皮-间质转化（ EMT）可产生与CSCs分子特征相同的细胞，而且EMT与肿瘤侵袭转移有关，是开启早期肿瘤进入侵袭性恶性表型的关键过程。因此，开发阻止肿瘤细胞发生EMT的治疗策略，将不仅可从源头上消灭肿瘤复发的“种子”，还可抑制早期肿瘤进展为侵袭性表型的过程，从而达到有效防治恶性肿瘤术后复发的目的。