Journal
JOURNAL OF CELLULAR AND MOLECULAR MEDICINE
Volume 22, Issue 12, Pages 6238-6248Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/jcmm.13911
Keywords
cancer stem cells; CD133; cell culture model; chorioallantoic membrane assay; hepatocellular carcinoma; tumour cell aggressiveness
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Funding
- ELAN program of the Friedrich-Alexander University of Elangen-Nuremberg
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Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common causes for cancer-related death worldwide with rapidly increasing incidence and mortality rates. As for other types of cancers, also in HCC cancer stem cells (CSCs) are thought to be responsible for tumour initiation, progression and therapy failure. However, as rare subpopulations of tumour tissue, CSCs are difficult to isolate, thus making the development of suitable and reliable model systems necessary. In our study, we generated HepG2 subclones with enriched CSC potential by application of the spheroid formation method and subsequent single-cell cloning. Analyses in several 2D and 3D cell culture systems as well as a panel of functional assays both in vitro and in vivo revealed that the generated subclones displayed characteristic and sustained features of tumour initiating cells as well as highly aggressive properties related to tumour progression and metastasis. These characteristics could clearly be correlated with the expression of CSC markers that might have prognostic value in the clinical HCC setting. Therefore, we conclude that our CSC enriched HepG2 clones certainly represent suitable model systems to study the role of CSCs during HCC initiation, progression and drug resistance.
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