Research on Cancer Stem Cells

Histology of a primary tumour (mag. 2.5x) initiated by 10.000 oral cancer stem cells (CD44 highly positive cells). Of note is the fact that the CD44 negative cells did not form any tumour.

Written by Xiao Liang

Despite the significant advance that has been made in the treatment of cancer in terms of both developing targeted therapy as well as improving chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the survival rates, especially for oral and oesophageal cancers, has remained very low. New methods to combat cancer needs to be revealed, and one such method targets the cancer stem cells.

Cancer stem cells

The concept of cancer stem cells has been developed in the last few years. It is based on the assumption that every tumour contains a particular sub-population of immature cells, called stem cell population, or tumour initiating cell population, and more mature tumour cells. Only cancer stem cells are capable of unlimited self-renewal and initiation of new tumours, while the more mature cancer cells die on their own after undergoing some rounds of divisions. The cancer stem cells were proven to have a slower cell cycle and thus to be more resistant to apoptosis. As a consequence, the cancer stem cells are resistant to the apoptotic-induced drugs used nowadays in cancer therapy, which manage to kill the more mature, active cycling cancer cells. Therefore, any efficient cancer therapy should be aimed at the elimination not only of the more mature tumour cells but also at cancer stem cells which may practically be regarded as the root of the cancer and thus must be eliminated so they can not multiply and no further daughter cells can arise.

Bergen Oral Cancer Research Group

The main problem related to identifying such therapy towards the highly resilient cancer stem cells is the fact that these are very versatile cells, difficult to isolate and maintain undifferentiated in experimental settings. That is why the investigation of the stem cells’ biological and molecular properties has been very challenging. Nevertheless, great advances are being made in many research labs with regard to cancer stem cells in different types of cancers.

One of the goals of Bergen oral cancer group in cancer stem cell is to identify robust methods for the identification of cancer stem cells in oral cancer and to characterise their biological properties. Better understanding of their behaviour and how they can be targeted and killed could contribute to the development of new, more efficient therapy, and finally to the improvement of the prognosis of oral cancer.