Cancer stem cells and drug resistance: the potential of nanomedicine

Properties of the small group of cancer cells called tumor-initiating or cancer stem cells (CSCs) involved in drug resistance, metastasis and relapse of cancers can significantly affect tumor therapy. Importantly, tumor drug resistance seems to be closely related to many intrinsic or acquired proper...

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Published inNanomedicine (London, England) Vol. 7; no. 4; pp. 597 - 615
Main Authors Vinogradov, Serguei, Wei, Xin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England Future Medicine Ltd 01.04.2012
Subjects
Antineoplastic Agents - therapeutic use
cancer microenvironment
cancer stem cells
Care and treatment
drug efflux transporters
Drug resistance
Drug Resistance, Neoplasm
Genetic aspects
Health aspects
Humans
Metastasis
Nanomedicine
Nanomedicine - methods
Neoplastic Stem Cells - drug effects
Neoplastic Stem Cells - metabolism
Signal Transduction
Stem cells
United States
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Summary:Properties of the small group of cancer cells called tumor-initiating or cancer stem cells (CSCs) involved in drug resistance, metastasis and relapse of cancers can significantly affect tumor therapy. Importantly, tumor drug resistance seems to be closely related to many intrinsic or acquired properties of CSCs, such as quiescence, specific morphology, DNA repair ability and overexpression of antiapoptotic proteins, drug efflux transporters and detoxifying enzymes. The specific microenvironment (niche) and hypoxic stability provide additional protection against anticancer therapy for CSCs. Thus, CSC-focused therapy is destined to form the core of any effective anticancer strategy. Nanomedicine has great potential in the development of CSC-targeting drugs, controlled drug delivery and release, and the design of novel gene-specific drugs and diagnostic modalities. This review is focused on tumor drug resistance-related properties of CSCs and describes current nanomedicine approaches, which could form the basis of novel combination therapies for eliminating metastatic and CSCs.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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ObjectType-Review-1
ISSN:1743-5889
1748-6963
DOI:10.2217/nnm.12.22