Research progress in targeted therapy for liver cancer stem cells / 临床肝胆病杂志

ABSTRACT

Liver cancer is a malignant tumor. The current operation or chemoradiotherapy cannot achieve a satisfactory effect, and relapse and metastasis are always big problems in the treatment of liver cancer. According to the recent theory of liver cancer stem cells, the genesis, development, relapse, metastasis, and prognosis of liver cancer are all related to liver cancer stem cells. If the liver cancer stem cells are treated by targeted therapy, which would reduce the number of or destroy the stem cells, the relapse, metastasis, and drug resistance after tumor resection may be reduced or eliminated. The progress in targeted therapy for liver cancer stem cells is reviewed here. Although there are many types of targeted therapies for liver cancer stem cells, it is still a key problem that the targeting is not strong enough, which needs to be solved urgently. Whether the dual- or multi-targeting would solve this problem still needs to be confirmed by further experimental studies.