Abstract
The Cancer Stem-Like Cells (CSLCs) are cells with tumorigenic potential, which are involved in initiation, progression and spread of the tumor. Recent evidences in the last decade have suggested the existence of CSLCs in distinct types of tumors such as lung, brain, breast, prostate, colon, head and neck, ovarian and larynx cancers. They are identified by their tissue specific stem cell-like properties including self-renewal and having potential to differentiate. Laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC), originating from laryngeal epithelial tissue, is one of the most commonly diagnosed malignancies among the head and neck tumors worldwide. LSCC is frequently diagnosed among middle-aged people and its incidence has been reported to increase each year. Therapeutic options mostly cannot give positive clinical response especially for the advanced LSCC cases. LSCC is still one of the important causes of cancer deaths, particularly in men, worldwide, although the technologies in detection and diagnosis of LSCC have been significantly improved recently. In this review, we have summarized the most current literature to understand the functions and roles of CSLCs in human LSCC. We believe that this review will contribute to knowledge of scientist not only working in LSCC field, but also studying the CSLCs in other cancers and diseases, and will help elucidating the roles of CSLCs implicated in LSCC initiation, development, progression, and chemo-radioresistance.
Highlights
Laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC), originating from laryngeal epithelial tissue, is one of the most commonly diagnosed malignancies in the head and neck region with an increased incidence rate in middle-aged and elderly men, worldwide [1, 2]
Wu et al utilized both CD133 surface marker and side population (SP) sorting for more effective enrichment of cancer stem like cells (CSLCs) in Hep-2 cells. They found that CD133 positive SP cells exhibited stem cell properties more profoundly, and displayed stronger tumorigenic potential in NOD/SCID mice than CD133 negative cells [22, 23]. These findings indicated the power of the combination of SP sorting and CD133 selection in more accurate purification of CSLCs from laryngeal cancer cell line [23]
Elevated IL-24 expression induced apoptosis significantly in CD133 positive cells [43]. All these findings indicate the involvement of CD133 positive cells in LSCC carcinogenesis (Figure 2) and help shedding light into the mechanisms in which CSLCs might contribute to the LSCC pathogenesis (Figure 3), the current data about the roles and functions of CSLCs in the pathogenesis of LSCC is limited, and further studies are required for clear understanding of this process
Summary
Laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC), originating from laryngeal epithelial tissue, is one of the most commonly diagnosed malignancies in the head and neck region with an increased incidence rate in middle-aged and elderly men, worldwide [1, 2]. Identified in hematopoietic cancers, the presence of CSLCs was demonstrated in a variety of tumors including LSCC [8,9,10] They were characterized by their stem cell-like properties including self-renewal, having potential to differentiate, expressing stem cell specific markers, and producing heterogeneous cancer population with different tumorigenic capacity [11]. Yu et al showed that SP cells sorted from Hep-2 cell line possessed tumorigenic potential with high proliferative, clone formation and differentiation capacities They showed the correlation of the ratio of SP cells sorted from primary tumor cultures with different clinical outcome of LSCC patients and proposed SP cells as a potential prognostic factor of laryngeal cancer [21]. There are several researches investigating the laryngeal CSLCs, more efforts are needed for further characterization of laryngeal CSLCs
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