Therapeutic target and application prospects of oral squamous cell carcinoma stem cells / 中国组织工程研究

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Tumor stem cells are a small number of types of tumor cells that have the ability to self-renew and differentiate into different types of tumor cells. Oral squamous cell carcinoma stem cells are highly tumorigenic and play a role in tumor differentiation, treatment resistance, recurrence and metastasis. Simultaneously, tumor stem cells have great similarities with normal stem cells, so it is necessary to establish effective and accurate tumor stem cell identification methods; and corresponding targeted treatment strategies are designed to help the prognosis of patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma. OBJECTIVE: To summarize the current methods used in the literature to identify and isolate oral squamous cell carcinoma stem cells, analyze potential targets for oral squamous cell carcinoma stem cells, and summarize the potential research progress on targets. METHODS: Computers were used to retrieve the CNKI and PubMed databases for relevant literature published since its establishment to 2020. The English key words were “oral squamous cell carcinoma, OSCC, cancer stem cells, HNSCC, head and neck squamous carcinoma cell”. Chinese key words were “oral squamous cell carcinoma stem cells, oral squamous cell carcinoma, tumor stem cells, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma”. Retrieval results were summarized and analyzed to exclude low-relevance, duplicate, and obsolete documents. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Targeted intervention of oral squamous cell carcinoma stem cells has important clinical significance. CD44, CD133 and ALDH are currently the most suitable biomarkers for the identification and isolation of oral squamous cell carcinoma stem cells. They are the same as Oct3/4, Nanog, Sox2, Bmi1, EGFR signaling pathway, SHH signaling pathway, Notch signaling pathway, Wnt signaling pathway, Let-7 family, MicroRNA-200 family and natural compounds together as potential targets for targeted therapy of oral squamous cell carcinoma stem cells.