BACR8
Prevalence of cancer stem cells and its association with clinical outcome and prognostic factors in breast cancer patients
Zahra Madjd1, Mohammad E Akbari2, Ensieh Farahani1
1Oncopathology Research Centre, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran, 2Cancer Research Centre, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (MC), Tehran, Iran
Background
Cancer stem cells or tumourigenic cells are a small population of tumour cells those posses classic features of stem cells such as self-renewal and proliferation. Whereas majority of cells in the tumour have limited proliferation property and cannot self-renew. The capacity of breast tumour development has been shown to be limited to CD44+/CD24-/low epithelial tumour cells. The importance of detection of breast cancer stem cells is due to its implication on development of new therapeutic strategies. It has been also showed that in animal model ERalpha/PR+ cells scattered through the epithelium are stem cells that self-renew through asymmetric cell division and generate patches of transit amplifying and differentiated cells.
Method
In the recent studies, we have been investigating breast cancer tissues for the prevalence of cancer stem cells and their prognostic values. Immunohistochemistry was applied to identify the population of cancer stem cells in the paraffin embedded tissues of 110 breast cancer patients. The prevalence of cancer stem cells were then correlated with patient survival, also level of expression of ER, PR and Erb2 and prognostic factors including tumour size, lymph node stage, and tumour grade.
Results and Conclusion
Majority of anticancer therapies target non-tumourigenic cells in tumour, while cancer stem cells are still survive and leading to tumour recurrence. Therefore, strategies designed to target cancer stem cells in combination with current treatments may lead to more effective therapies.
