This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Purchase Article View Shopping Cart Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a colleague Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Save to my personal folders Download to citation manager Rights & Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Maitland, N. J. Articles by Collins, A. T. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Maitland, N. J. Articles by Collins, A. T. Social Bookmarking                            What's this?

Prostate Cancer Stem Cells: A New Target for Therapy

Norman J. Maitland, Anne T. Collins

From the YCR Cancer Research Unit, Department of Biology, University of York, York, United Kingdom

Corresponding author: Norman J. Maitland, BsC, PhD, YCR Cancer Research Unit, Department of Biology, University of York, Heslinton, York, YO10 5YW, United Kingdom; e-mail: njm9{at}york.ac.uk

The existence of prostate cancer stem cells offers a theoretical explanation for many of the enduring uncertainties surrounding the etiology and treatment of the most commonly diagnosed tumor in US males. The study of cancer stem cells in prostate, as in other complex tissues, is critically dependent on the availability of pure cell populations, a situation complicated by the heterogeneity of prostate tumors. However, selection of cells with a CD133⁺/2β1 integrin/ CD44⁺ phenotype enriches for a tumor-initiating population from human prostate cancers. Among the most pressing needs is for enduring therapy in patients who have experienced failure of hormonal treatments. Because the putative cancer stem cell does not express androgen receptor, it is likely to be immune from most androgen-based therapies, and an inherent genetic instability would enable the tumor to develop the new variants present in hormone-refractory disease. Prostate cancer stem cells have a unique gene expression signature that can also be related to Gleason grade and patient outcome. The scarcity of cancer stem cells in a prostate tumor will probably limit their usefulness in cancer diagnosis and prognosis. However, the emergence of new stem-cell therapeutic targets not only will require new assays for efficacy (because of their relatively quiescent nature), but also holds real promise of more lasting treatments to augment those currently directed against the remaining tumor cells, which comprise 99.9% of tumor mass, but paradoxically have a poor tumor-initiating capacity.

Authors’ disclosures of potential conflicts of interest and author contributions are found at the end of this article.

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Facebook    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				H. Enderling, A. R.A. Anderson, M. A.J. Chaplain, A. Beheshti, L. Hlatky, and P. Hahnfeldt Paradoxical Dependencies of Tumor Dormancy and Progression on Basic Cell Kinetics Cancer Res., November 15, 2009; 69(22): 8814 - 8821. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				S. Z. Young and A. Bordey GABA's Control of Stem and Cancer Cell Proliferation in Adult Neural and Peripheral Niches Physiology, June 1, 2009; 24(3): 171 - 185. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]