Role of hypoxia-induced factors in cancer development mediated by cancer stem cells / 天津医药

ABSTRACT

Hypoxia and hypoxia-induced factors (HIFs) are main regulators for tumor stem cells, metastasis-initiating cells and their differentiated progenies to adapt to the environment which lacks oxygen and nutrient in the process of cancer development. HIFs are up-regulated in many tumors, including leukemia, glioblastoma, melanoma, prostate cancer, breast cancer and pancreatic cancer, in where they are especially highly expressed in hypoxic regions. HIFs activation can induce expression of numerous stem cell related genes and multidrug resistance genes, which may play important roles in tumour and stem cell-mediated self-renewing, energy metabolism alternation, invasion, metastasis, angiogenesis and treatment resis?tance of neoplastic cells. Consequently, it will provide new clues for cancer therapy after investigating the role of HIFs in tar?geted regulation and metabolic pathway modulation in various stem cell-mediated tumor cells.