Lung cancer is a devastating disease and a major therapeutic burden with poor survival rates. The discovery of rare cells with stem cell-like properties in solid tumours is emerging as an important area of cancer research and may help explain the resistance of these tumours to current therapeutics. Despite rapid developments in cancer stem cell research in other solid tumours, progress in the lung has been hampered by an incomplete understanding of the epithelial stem cell hierarchy, the heterogeneity of disease and the lack of a suitable in vivo transplantation model to assess stem cell behaviour. In this review we critically discuss what is currently known about the role of normal stem cells and cancer-initiating cells in lung tumour development, and briefly discuss strategies aimed at advancing the field of lung stem cell biology, with an emphasis on the design and manipulation of state-of-art mouse models.
详细资料
文献种类:期刊
期刊名称: Molecular Oncology
期刊缩写: Mol Oncol
期卷页: 2010年第4卷第5期 397-403页
地址: Division of Molecular Genetics and Centre for Biomedical Genetics, The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Plesmanlaan 121, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. k.sutherland@nki.nl