Melanoma stem cell markers and targeted therapies: awareness and pertinence / 中国组织工程研究

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Melanomas, a highly malignant tumor of the skin, have no effective therapy to date. OBJECTIVE: To review the melanoma stem cell markers identified and existing therapies. METHODS: We retrieved database of CNKI and PubMed for articles addressing melanoma stem cell markers and targeted therapies, which were published from January 2010 to December 2016. The key words were"melanoma, cancer stem cell, marker, therapy" in Chinese and English, respectively. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Forty articles were included in the final review. It is important to separate cancer stem cells from tumor cells by tumor stem cell markers for the study of tumor growth, recurrence, metastasis and drug resistance. There are still no generally recognized markers of melanoma stem cells, but the generally studied markers are CD20, CD133, CD271, ABCB5 and SOX10. To date, we have a poor understanding of melanoma stem cell markers, and further investigations on the markers and targeted therapies are warranted.