Cancer stem cells are a rare population in tumors with high metastatic potential and resistance to treatment. Recent strategies in cancer treatment have focused on targeting important signaling pathways that have an important role in maintaining CSC populations. TAZ (transcriptional co-activator with PDZ-binding motif) is a key downstream of the Hippo pathway which plays a fundamental role in the survival of CSCs from different origins, however, no data on the role of TAZ in esophageal cancer are available. Our findings showed that esophageal CSCs enriched from the YM-1 cell line have stemness properties.We found that TAZ was strongly expressed in esophageal CSCs and knockdown of TAZ in esophageal CSCs results in reduced colony formation and cell migration. Moreover, this data indicated that TAZ knockdown reduces the expression of SOX-2, OCT-4, and Nanong in esophageal CSCs. Taken together, the results of the current study suggested that TAZ has a crucial role in the biology of esophageal CSCs.

癌症干细胞是具有高转移潜力和对治疗的抵抗力的肿瘤中的罕见种群。癌症治疗中的最新策略集中于靶向重要的信号通路，这些通路在维持CSC人群中起着重要的作用。TAZ（吨ranscriptional共一个与PD ctivator ž-结合基序）是Hippo途径的关键下游，它在不同来源的CSC的存活中起着基本作用，但是，尚无有关TAZ在食管癌中作用的数据。我们的发现表明，从YM-1细胞系富集的食管CSC具有干性。此外，此数据表明，TAZ抑制可降低食管CSC中SOX-2，OCT-4和Nanong的表达。综上所述，当前的研究结果表明，TAZ在食管CSC的生物学中起着至关重要的作用。