Solid tumors display a complex biology that requires a multipronged treatment strategy. Most anticancer interventions, including chemotherapy, are currently unable to prevent treatment resistance and relapse. In general, therapeutics target cancer cells and overlook the tumor microenvironment (TME) and the presence of cancer stem cells (CSCs) with self-renewal and tumorigenic abilities. CSCs have been postulated to play key roles in tumor initiation, progression, therapy resistance, and metastasis. Hence, CSC markers have been suggested as diagnostics to forecast cancer prognosis as well as molecular targets for new-generation cancer treatments, especially in resistant disease. We report here original findings on expression and prognostic significance of CSC markers in several cancers. We examined and compared the transcriptional expression of CSC markers (ABCB1, ABCG2, ALDH1A1, CD24, CD44, CD90, CD133, CXCR4, EPCAM, ICAM1, and NES) in tumor tissues versus the adjacent normal tissues using publicly available databases, The Cancer Genome Atlas and Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis. We found that CSC transcriptional markers were, to a large extent, expressed in higher abundance in solid tumors such as colon, lung, pancreatic, and esophageal cancers. On the other hand, no CSC marker in our analysis was expressed in the same pattern in all cancers, while individual CSC marker expression, alone, was not significantly associated with overall patient survival. Innovation in next-generation cancer therapeutics and diagnostics ought to combine CSC markers as well as integrative diagnostics that pool knowledge from CSCs and other TME components and cancer cells.

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与患者生存结果相关的癌症干细胞标志物：整合诊断和下一代抗癌药物开发的经验教训

实体瘤表现出复杂的生物学特征，需要多管齐下的治疗策略。大多数抗癌干预措施，包括化疗，目前都无法预防治疗耐药性和复发。一般来说，治疗以癌细胞为目标，而忽略了肿瘤微环境 (TME) 和具有自我更新和致瘤能力的癌症干细胞 (CSC) 的存在。CSCs 已被假定在肿瘤的发生、进展、治疗抵抗和转移中发挥关键作用。因此，CSC 标志物已被建议作为预测癌症预后的诊断方法以及新一代癌症治疗的分子靶标，尤其是在耐药性疾病中。我们在此报告关于 CSC 标志物在几种癌症中的表达和预后意义的原始发现。ABCB1、ABCG2、ALDH1A1、CD24、CD44、CD90、CD133、CXCR4、EPCAM、ICAM1和NES) 使用公开可用的数据库、癌症基因组图谱和基因表达谱交互式分析在肿瘤组织与相邻正常组织中的比较。我们发现 CSC 转录标记在很大程度上在实体肿瘤（如结肠癌、肺癌、胰腺癌和食道癌）中以更高的丰度表达。另一方面，在我们的分析中，没有 CSC 标志物在所有癌症中以相同的模式表达，而单独的 CSC 标志物表达与总体患者存活率没有显着相关性。下一代癌症治疗和诊断的创新应该结合 CSC 标志物以及整合来自 CSC 和其他 TME 成分和癌细胞的知识的综合诊断。