objective: nucleostemin (ns) is a recently identified gene that is expressed mainly in the nucleoli of neuronal, embryonic and mesenchymal stem cells which plays a role in their self renewal. over expression of this gene has been reported in several cancer cell lines tumoral tissues including gastric, hepatic and prostate cancer. in this study, we investigated the effects of suppression of this...

Cancer is one of the leading causes of deaths worldwide. While cancers may initially show good response to chemotherapy or radiotherapy, it is not uncommon for them to recur at a later date. This phenomenon may be explained by the existence of a small population of cancer stem cells, which are inherently resistant to anti-cancer treatment as well as being capable of self-renewal. Therefore, whi...

Nowadays, the cancer stem cells are considered to be significantly responsible for growth, metastasis, invasion and recurrence of all cancer. Cancer stem cells are typically characterized by continuous proliferation and self-renewal as well as by differentiation potential, while stem cells are considered to differentiate into tissue- specific phenotype of mature cells under the influence of mic...

Colon cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide, despite recent advances in clinical oncology. Accumulating evidence sheds light on the existence of cancer stem cells and their role in conferring therapeutic resistance. Cancer stem cells are a minor fraction of cancer cells, which enable tumor heterogeneity and initiate tumor formation. In addition, these cells are ...

Intestinal stem cells (ISCs) are a group of rare cells located in the intestinal crypts which are responsible for the maintenance of the intestinal homeostasis and intestinal regeneration following injury or inflammation. Lineage tracing experiments in mice have proven that ISCs can repopulate the entire intestinal crypt. It is noteworthy that in such experiments, only a subset of intestinal cr...

stem cells are the cells having some distinguishing characteristics like longevity, high capacity of self-renewal and differentiation, quiescence and highly error-free proliferation. almost all stem cells have the potential of lineage reprogramming, i.e. inter-conversion of cell lineages. they also have the potential to differentiate into almost all kinds of cells. these cells have been found i...

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) or tumor initiating cells are rare cells that are able to establish a tumor or metastasis. Identification of those CSCs is, however, cumbersome even in established cell lines. Several cancer stem cell markers were reported to be expressed by ovarian cancer. Those cancer stem cells are gifted with lower vulnerability to irradiation and cytostatic drugs explaining the hig...

Recently, there is an increasing evidence supporting the theory of cancer stem cells not only in leukemia but also in solid cancer. To date, the existence of cancer stem cells has been proven in acute and chronic myeloid leukemia, in breast cancer, in brain tumors, in lung cancer and gastrointestinal tumors. This review is focusing on the recent discovery of stem cells in leukemia, human brain ...

Local and distant recurrence of malignant tumors following radio- and/or chemotherapy correlates with poor prognosis of patients. Among the reasons for cancer recurrence, preexisting cancer stem cells (CSCs) are considered the most likely cause due to their properties of self-renewal, pluripotency, plasticity and tumorigenicity. It has been demonstrated that preexisting cancer stem cells derive...