PURPOSE To establish a method for the mass production of human corneal endothelium (HCE) precursors and the therapeutic application of these cells in a rabbit CE-deficiency model. METHODS A sphere-forming assay was performed to produce precursors from cultured HCE. Various marker expressions were examined in the sphere colonies, and their progenies by immunocytochemistry and reverse transcrip...

BACKGROUND In laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), CD133+ cells were found to display cancer stem cell (CSC) characteristics. BMI1 is an oncogene that plays key roles in proliferation in CSCs. However, no published reports have examined the role of BMI1 in laryngeal CSCs. METHODS Immunofluorescence staining confirmed the coexpression of BMI1 and CD133. After sorting, real-time polymerase ...

Halophilic archaea are known as the novel producers of natural products and their supernatant metabolites could have cytotoxic effects on cancer cells. In the present study, we screened the anticancer potential of supernatant metabolites from eight native haloarchaeal strains obtained from a culture collection in Iran. Five human cancer cell lines including breast, lung, prostate and also human...

Elevated aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 (ALDH1) has been proposed as one of the possible candidates for a stem cell maker that can be used for the isolation of cancer stem cells from cancers such as leukemia and breast cancer. In the current study, we found that subpopulations with elevated ALDH1 were present in the human sarcoma cell lines, MG63 (osteosarcoma) and HT1080 (fibrosarcoma), using Aldefl...

Purpose: To investigate the antitumor and chemoresistance-lowering effects of pectolinarigenin on breast cancer cells. Methods: Pectolinarigenin was purified by a combination of silica gel and Sephadex LH-20 column chromatography from ethanol extracts of the aerial parts of C. japonicum DC. Breast cancer selfrenewal properties were tested by colony formation and tumor sphere formation assays. T...

Recent studies have suggested that cancer stem cells (CSCs) may be responsible for tumorigenesis and contribute to resistance to chemotherapy. Side population (SP) cells are thought to be enriched for CSCs in most types of human tumors. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to sort SP cells using an A549 lung cancer cell line, identify the cancer stem cell-like properties of SP and determ...

Cancer stem cells (CSCs), including those of advanced prostate cancer, are a suggested reason for tumor resistance toward conventional tumor therapy. Therefore, new therapeutic agents are urgently needed for targeting CSCs. Despite the minimal understanding of their modes of action, natural products and herbal therapies have been commonly used in the prevention and treatment of many cancers. Be...

The CD74-Neuregulin1 (NRG1) fusion gene was recently identified as novel driver of invasive mucinous adenocarcinoma, a malignant form of lung cancer. However, the function of the CD74-NRG1 fusion gene in adenocarcinoma pathogenesis and the mechanisms by which it may impart protumorigenic characteristics to cancer stem cells (CSC) is still unclear. In this study, we found that the expression of ...

Background and objectives: Modeling cancer in vivo is a very important tool to investigate cancer pathogenesis and molecular mechanisms involved in cancer progression. Laboratory mice are the most common animal used for rebuilding human cancer in vivo. Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are the main reason of failure in cancer therapy because of tumor relapse and metastasis. Isolation of cancer stem cell...