Abstract
Cancer stem cells (CSCs) have been identified in almost all cancers and give rise to metastases and can also act as a reservoir of cancer cells that may cause a relapse after surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy. Thus they are obvious targets in therapeutic approaches and also a great challenge in cancer treatment. The threat presented by CSCs lies in their unlimited proliferative ability and multidrug resistance. These findings have necessitated an effective novel strategy to target CSCs for cancer treatment. Nanomaterials are on the route to providing novel methods in cancer therapies. Although, there have been a large number of excellent work in the field of targeted cancer therapy, it remains an open question how nanomaterials can meet future demands for targeting and eradicating of CSCs. In this review, we summarized recent and highlighted future prospects for targeting CSCs for cancer therapies by using a variety of nanomaterials.
Highlights
With the financial support of government and society for cancer research, progress has been made in the development of innovative strategies for cancer therapy
which can be mainly ascribed to the multidrug resistance
polymer has been used in cancer therapy by targeting cancer stem cells (CSCs)
Summary
With the financial support of government and society for cancer research, progress has been made in the development of innovative strategies for cancer therapy. Further researches of other tumor types have identified CSCs in almost all cancers, including prostate (Collins et al, 2005; Maitland and Collins, 2008; Lang et al, 2009), lung (Eramo et al, 2007), colon (O’Brien et al, 2007; Ricci-Vitiani et al, 2007), pancreatic (Hermann et al, 2007; Li et al, 2007), gastric (Fukuda et al, 2009), breast (Al-Hajj et al, 2003), glioma (Galli et al, 2004; Bao et al, 2006), and brain (Hemmati et al, 2003; Singh et al, 2003) cancers. These CSCs exhibit several characteristics, including self-renewal, differentiation into multiple cell types, expression of ATP-binding cassette (ABC) pumps that enable them to resist chemotherapeutic agents, and ionizing radiations
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