Roles of Cancer Stem Cells in the Occurrence and Progression of Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is the most common cancer and the second cause of cancer death amongwomen. Despite recent developments in therapeutic tools about 25% of all the involvedcases die annually.There is increasing evidence that cancer stem cells (CSCs) play a criticalrole in breast cancer initiation, progression, metastasis and drug resistance. The breastcancer stem cells (BCSCs) are endowed with the capacity for self-renewal anddifferentiation, tumorigenicity, chemotherapy and radiotherapy resistance, features that areresponsible for tumor progression, disease recurrence, and metastasis. In breast cancer, firstbreast cancer stem cells(BCSCs) are identified as CD44+/ CD24- cells. The importantsignaling pathways that mediate cell interactions in BCSCs that include factors such aswingless type (Wnt), Notch, sonic hedgehog (SHH), are known to be involved in tumordevelopment and progression. This paper is focused on the role of cancer stem cells in thedevelopment and progression of breast cancer. The data were collected from data-basesincluding PubMed, science direct, medline, springer and etc and were analyzed. This studywas indicated that one of the mechanisms accounting for treatment resistance in humanbreast cancers is cancer stem cells.Therapeutic cancer stem cells which have the potential totumorgenesis and metastasize will be an important aspect of the BCSC field as these are thecells that cause the majority of morbidity and mortality from breast cancer.

کلیدواژه ها:

Cancer Stem Cells ، Breast Cancer ، Toumorgenesis ، Metastasis ، Signaling Pathways