ABSTRACT
The prevalence and mortality rate of lung cancer are high. Comprehensive treatment with surgical involvement is the mainstream approach for treating early-stage lung cancer. Video-assisted thoracic surgery has been adopted as the standard minimally invasive surgical option in recent years. However, difficulties in distinguishing cancer tissue, localizing draining lymph node and identifying intersegmental planes make complete removal of cancer tissue challenging. In recent years, near-infrared fluorescence imaging has been integrated with video-assisted thoracic surgery and enjoys broad application prospects. Now it plays an important role in the localization of pulmonary nodules, marking of sentinel lymph nodes and discrimination of intersegmental planes during surgeries.
ABSTRACT
With high morbidity and mortality, lung cancer is a major threat to human health and one of the focuses of tumor researches. Lung cancer stem cells (LCSCs) are regarded as a subpopulation of cells within lung cancer tissues with the capacity of self-renewal and differentiation, and might be related to tumorigenesis and heterogeneity of lung cancer. Tumor recurrence, metastasis and drug resistance of lung cancers could be clarified by LCSC hypothesis. Thus it's therapeutically prospective to target at these cells. This review summarizes the biomarkers of LCSCs and their aberrant signal pathways, as well as the therapeutic strategies targeting at LCSCs.