Stem Cells and Cancer in the Liver
Stem Cells and Cancer in the Liver
复制标题
干细胞和肝脏癌症
作者：
H. Taniguchi;T. Chiba
体干细胞具有高增殖能力、多能性（分化为具有不同功能的多个成熟细胞的能力）和自我更新能力（通过不对称分裂维持干细胞自身的能力），其存在已逐渐在各种消化器官如肠和肝中被揭示。虽然研究人员曾经从其在再生医学中的应用的角度对体干细胞感兴趣，但由于其与致癌过程的关联被阐明，近年来体干细胞在癌症研究中引起了广泛关注。通过对造血干细胞和神经干细胞的表征，已经鉴定了许多参与自我更新能力的基因，即“干细胞基因”。这些基因被发现参与了肝脏中体干细胞的自我更新。另一方面，由于这些“干细胞基因”被证明是癌症相关基因，人们努力从干细胞系统层次结构的角度来了解癌症的发生以及癌症复发和转移的机制。组织中的干/祖细胞是癌症发展的来源的假设已经开始通过使用分离的正常干/祖细胞的肿瘤起始的前瞻性分析来验证。也就是说，与正常组织中存在干细胞的情况一样，癌症干细胞也存在于肿瘤组织中。癌症干细胞引发肿瘤，形成异质性癌细胞的层级。在这里，我将描述最新的研究结果，肝干/祖细胞，引起人们的注意，作为肝细胞癌和胆管癌的发展来源，并讨论之间的关联肝干细胞的自我更新和恶性转化的过程。
The presence of somatic stem cells, which have high proliferative capacity, multipotency (capacity to differentiate into multiple mature cells with different functions) and self-renewal capacity (capacity to maintain the stem cells as themselves by asymmetric division) has been gradually revealed in various digestive organs such as intestines and liver. Although researchers used to be interested in somatic stem cells from the perspective of their application in regenerative medicine, they have recently been attracting much attention in cancer research because their association with carcinogenesis process was elucidated. A number of genes that are involved in self-renewal capacity, namely, “stemness genes”, have been identified through characterization of hematopoietic stem cells and neural stem cells. These genes were found to be involved in the self-renewal of somatic stem cells also in the liver. On the other hand, because these “stemness genes” turned out to be cancer-associated genes, efforts have been made to understand the carcinogenesis and the mechanisms of cancer recurrence and metastasis from the perspective of hierarchy of stem cell system. The hypothesis that the stem/progenitor cells in tissue are the source of cancer development have started to be verified by prospective analysis for tumor initiation using isolated normal stem/progenitor cells. In other words, the concept that, as is the case with the presence of stem cells in normal tissues, cancer stem cells are also present in tumor tissues. Cancer stem cells initiate tumors forming a hierarchy of heterogeneous cancer cells. Here, I will describe the newest findings on hepatic stem/progenitor cells that are attracting attention as a source of the development of hepatocellular carcinoma and cholangiocarcinioma and discuss the association between the self-renewal of hepatic stem cells and the process of malignant transformation.
影响因子：
6
作者：
Hooth, MJ;Coleman, WB;Smith, GJ
通讯作者：
Smith, GJ