[1] Department of Immunology and Microbial Science, The Scripps Research Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA [2] Department of Immunology, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China.
Br J Cancer. 2011 Apr 5.
The cancer stem cell hypothesis suggests that neoplastic clones are maintained exclusively by a small subpopulation of cells, which have indefinite proliferation and differentiation potentials and give rise to phenotypically diverse cancer cells. Cancer stem cells have been isolated by their ability to efflux Hoechst 33342 dye and are referred to as the 'side population' (SP).
The Hoechst efflux assay was used to isolate and characterize the SP from murine D121 lung carcinoma cells. Here, we demonstrated that D121-SP cells contain cancer stem cell characteristics, that is, upregulation of the transcription factors SOX2 and Oct 4 in D121-SP cells. In addition, the migration of D121-SP was decreased, and apoptosis of D121-SP was upregulated following knocking down of SOX2 in D121 cells. Importantly, downregulation of SOX2 in D121 cells markedly suppressed their metastatic potential in syngeneic mice.
These results suggest that the SP is an enriched source of lung tumour cells with stem cell properties and that SOX2 has an important role in maintaining stem cell properties and functions that may be a potential target for effective lung cancer therapy.
British Journal of Cancer advance online publication, 5 April 2011; doi:10.1038/bjc.2011.94 www.bjcancer.com.
PMID: 21468047 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] Source: National Library of Medicine.
