Osteosarcoma is the most common type of bone cancer, especially in children and young adults. The primary treatment for osteosarcoma is a combination of surgery and chemotherapy, however prognoses remain poor due to chemoresistance and early metastases. Osteosarcoma stem cells appear to play central roles in tumor recurrence, metastases and chemoresistance via self-renewal and differentiation. Targeting these cells may provide a novel strategy in the treatment of osteosarcoma. This review summarizes current knowledge of this rare phenotype and recent advances in understanding the functions OSCs (osteosarcoma stem cells) in osteosarcoma, with the aim of improving therapies in the future.

Microenvironmental regulation of cancer stem cells (CSCs) strongly influences the onset and spread of cancer. The way in which glioma cells interact with their microenvironment and acquire the phenotypes of CSCs remains elusive. We investigated how communication between vascular endothelial cells and glioma cells promoted the properties of glioma stem cells (GSCs). We observed that CD133+ GSCs were located closely to Shh+ endothelial cells in specimens of human glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). In both in vitro and in vivo studies, we found that endothelial cells promoted the appearance of CSC-like glioma cells, as demonstrated by increases in tumourigenicity and expression of stemness genes such as Sox2, Olig2, Bmi1 and CD133 in glioma cells that were co-cultured with endothelial cells. Knockdown of Smo in glioma cells led to a significant reduction of their CSC-like phenotype formation in vitro and in vivo. Endothelial cells with Shh knockdown failed to promote Hedgehog (HH) pathway activation and CSC-like phenotype formation in co-cultured glioma cells. By examination of glioma tissue specimens from 65 patients, we found that the survival of glioma patients was closely correlated with the expression of both Shh by endothelial cells and Gli1 by perivascular glioma cells. Taken together, our study demonstrates that endothelial cells in the tumour microenvironment provide Shh to activate the HH signalling pathway in glioma cells, thereby promoting GSC properties and glioma propagation. © 2014 The Authors. The Journal of Pathology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

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The enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH2) methyltransferase is the catalytic subunit of polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2), which acts as a transcription repressor via the trimethylation of lysine 27 of histone 3 (H3K27me3). EZH2 has been recognised as an oncogene in several types of tumors; however, its role in osteosarcoma has not been fully elucidated. Herein, we show that EZH2 silencing inhibits tumor growth and lung metastasis in osteosarcoma by facilitating re-expression of the imprinting gene tumor-suppressing STF cDNA 3 (TSSC3). Our previous study showed that TSSC3 acts as a tumor suppressor in osteosarcoma. In this study, we found that EZH2 was abnormally elevated in osteosarcoma, and its overexpression was associated with poor prognosis in osteosarcoma. Silencing of EZH2 resulted in tumor growth inhibition, apoptosis and chemosensitivity enhancement. Moreover, suppression of EZH2 markedly inhibited tumor growth and lung metastasis in vivo. Furthermore, EZH2 knockdown facilitated the re-expression of TSSC3 by reducing H3K27me3 in the promoter region. Cotransfection with siEZH2 and siTSSC3 could partially reverse the ability of siEZH2 alone. We have demonstrated that EZH2 plays a crucial role in tumor growth and distant metastasis in osteosarcoma; its oncogenic role is related to its regulation of the expression of TSSC3.