Abstract
Defined by its potential for self-renewal, differentiation and tumorigenicity, cancer stem cells (CSCs) are considered responsible for drug resistance and relapse. To understand the behavior of CSC, the effects of the microenvironment in each tissue are a matter of great concerns for scientists in cancer biology. However, there are many complicated obstacles in the mimicking the microenvironment of CSCs even with current advanced technology. In this context, novel biomaterials have widely been assessed as in vitro platforms for their ability to mimic cancer microenvironment. These efforts should be successful to identify and characterize various CSCs specific in each type of cancer. Therefore, extracellular matrix scaffolds made of biomaterial will modulate the interactions and facilitate the investigation of CSC associated with biological phenomena simplifying the complexity of the microenvironment. In this review, we summarize latest advances in biomaterial scaffolds, which are exploited to mimic CSC microenvironment, and their chemical and biological requirements with discussion. The discussion includes the possible effects on both cells in tumors and microenvironment to propose what the critical factors are in controlling the CSC microenvironment focusing the future investigation. Our insights on their availability in drug screening will also follow the discussion.
Highlights
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.license.Cancer stem cells (CSCs) refer to subpopulations of cancer cells that have a high ability to construct tumors upon experimental implantation in immunodeficient animal models.CSCs are highly tumorigenic and have self-renewal ability in addition to differentiation capacity, while the majority of cancer cells as non-CSCs are not tumorigenic in small numbers [1]
We briefly described the concept of CSC niche and tumor microenvironments as
Much progress has been achieved in mimicking tumor microenvironments, where 3D matrices are much more feasible than conventional 2D, still many challenges need to be explored
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. CSC niche consists of different types of cells including tumor cell and non-cancer cells—such as cancer associated fibroblast, tumor associated macrophage, endothelial cells, and other types of immune cells—sometimes as the result of differentiation potential [11,28,29,30] These cells secrete various factors acting as communicators, inducing angiogenesis and recruiting other cells such as stromal cells and immune suppressor cells which will promote progression, invasion, and metastasis of tumors [31,32]. Schematicillustration illustrationofofheterogenicity heterogenicity tumor microenvironment contains different cell notypes in addition to extracellular matrix affecting cancer stem cell fate. This figure is reused from [47] on MDPI.
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