The event of death by metastasis or recurrence is very common, many researchers have linked the tendency of some tumors to re-appear to the presence of occult or dormant cancer cells that may have a phenotype that allows them to remain "hidden" from the immune response. However, the understanding of these cells and the mechanisms that they use to achieve evasion remain mostly unknown. It is critical to understand these cells better and to be able to detect their presence for they are of great therapeutic importance.
Hi there,
I think CD133 is often used as a marker for stem-like cancer cells, but it is not exactly specific.
Unfortunately I'm no expert on the subject, but maybe that would be a good starting point for a literature search.
Good Luck
Thanks Michael, i searched it and it was considered a good candidate but is not very specific and there are tumorgenic cells that dont express it
It will also depend of the tumor type. Perhaps, if you are exploring a specific type of cancer you can identify in literature some markers that are specific enough (although I expect it will not be trivial). Several markers have been indeed associated with dormant/stem status (ALDH1, CD44, hypoxia markers) but assessing all of them may be unfeasible. Perhaps, this focus of Nature can give some hints: http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/cancerstemcells/
currently my interest is in Colorectal cancer, this one have a very predictable behaviour, however, i haven't been able to find any specific marker. The best option is to target the overxpression of MMP-7 and/or beta Catenin, but i would expect them to not be so present in residual cells that are dormant, or in cancer stem cells that have a very slow metabolism.
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