Research on cancer stem cells in osteosarcoma: current status, controversy and comment / 中华骨科杂志

ABSTRACT

Osteosarcoma is the most common primary malignant tumor of bone in children and adolescents and advanced osteosarcoma patients with evidence of metastasis share a poor prognosis.Osteosarcoma frequently gains resistance to standard therapies highlighting the need for improved treatment regimens and identification of novel therapeutic targets.The composition of cancer stem cells is one of the attractive theoretical studies in osteosarcoma biology.It has been proposed that osteosarcomas are composed of a group of functionally heterogeneous cells.Only a small number of osteosarcoma cells have stem cell characteristics,with self-renewal and differentiation capacities,which facilitates in the generation of different types of osteosarcoma cells.These osteosarcoma stem cells play a decisive role in maintaining the proliferation,invasion,recurrence,and metastasis of tumors.Previous research suggests that osteosarcoma formation may result from the development of cancer stem cells by the deregulation of normal self-renewal pathways of tissue stem cells.The discovery of cancer stem cells in osteosarcoma offers a new approach to understanding the biology of these conditions.Further study is needed to understand both normal and osteosarcoma stem cell development and various signaling pathways which appear to regulate self-renewal of stem cells and CSCs,with dysregulation of these signaling pathways leading to tumorigenesis.Ultimately,new prognostic and predictive markers,as well as targeted therapeutic strategies,may be developed to force osteosarcoma into better outcome or permanent remission.In this review we will discuss the research advance of cancer stem cells in osteosarcoma such as commonly used isolation techniques for osteosarcoma stem cells as well as the identified biochemical and molecular markers and we share our viewpoints on controversy in research of osteosarcoma stem cells.