Growth, Clonability, and Radiation Resistance of Esophageal Carcinoma-derived Stem-like Cells

Abstract

Objective: To separate/enrich tumor stem-like cells from the human esophageal carcinoma cell line OE-19 by using serum-free suspension culture and to identify their biological characteristics and radiation resistance. Methods: OE-19 cells were cultivated using adherent and suspension culture methods. The tumor stem-like phenotype of CD44 expression was detected using flow cytometry. We examined growth characteristics, cloning capacity in soft agar, and radiation resistance of 2 groups of cells. Results: Suspended cells in serum-free medium formed spheres that were enriched for CD44 expression. CD44 was expressed in 62.5% of suspended cells, but only in 11.7% of adherent cells. The suspended cells had greater capacity for proliferation and colony formation in soft agar than the adherent cells. When the suspended and adherent cells were irradiated at 5 Gy, 10 Gy, or 15 Gy, the proportion of CD44+ suspended cells strongly and weakly positive for CD44 was 77.8%, 66.5%, 57.5%; and 21.7%, 31.6%, 41.4%, respectively. In contrast, the proportion of CD44+ adherent cells strongly positive for CD44 was 18.9%, 14.%, and 9.95%, respectively. When the irradiation dose was increased to 30 Gy, the survival of the suspended and adherent cells was significantly reduced, and viable CD44+ cells were not detected. Conclusion: Suspended cell spheres generated from OE-19 esophageal carcinoma cells in serum-free stem medium are enriched in tumor stem-like cells. CD44 may be a marker for these cells.

MicroRNA-20b (miR-20b) Promotes the Proliferation, Migration, Invasion, and Tumorigenicity in Esophageal Cancer Cells via the Regulation of Phosphatase and Tensin Homologue Expression

“…Esophageal carcinoma is one of the most malignant tumor types and represents the sixth leading cause of cancer death [ 1 ], and it is generally diagnosed at a late stage, and is associated with a poor prognosis with a five-year survival of less than 10% [ 2 ]. Increasing studies indicate that a poor survival rate in esophageal cancer patients is highly associated with a frequent local invasion and distant metastasis [ 3 , 4 ].…”

Co-Expression of Putative Cancer Stem Cell Markers, CD133 and Nestin, in Skin Tumors

“…They are similar to stem cells and are capable of both self-renewal and differentiation into all of the cells within a tumor (Siclari and Qin, 2010;Rangwala et al, 2011). CSCs have been identified in a number of cancers including acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) (Bonnet and Dick, 1997;Passegue et al, 2003), glioblastoma (Singh et al, 2003), breast (Al-Hajj et al, 2003;Ponti et al, 2005), lung (Kim et al, 2005), prostate (Collins et al, 2005), ovarian (Bapat et al, 2005), gastric (Houghton et al, 2004), esophagous ( Li et al, 2013 ), Head and Neck SCC (Satpute et al, 2013) and skin cancers (Frank et al, 2005;Monzani et al, 2007). Different markers have been identified to be expressed on melanoma stem cells (Quintana et al, 2010;Shakhova and Sommer, 2013) comprising CD20 (Fang et al, 2005) and ABC transporter family members such as MDR1, ABCG2 and ABCB5 (Frank et al, 2003;Frank et al, 2005;Monzani et al, 2007;Keshet et al, 2008;Schatton et al, 2008), CD271 (Boiko et al, 2010;Civenni et al, 2011), CD44 (Fernandez-Figueras et al, 1996, CD133 (Klein et al, 2006) and Nestin (Piras et al, 2010;Fusi et al, 2011).…”

Cancer stem cells in human digestive tract malignancies

“…Afterward, p75NTR was introduced as a marker to identify esophageal cancerous cells with self-renewal and enhanced drug resistance [76]. Further studies characterized esophageal CSCs and proposed CD44 [77][78][79][80][81], CD133, CXCR4 [82], CD90 [83], and CD15 [78] as markers for esophageal stemlike cancer cells. ALDH1 activity has also been reported as a CSC marker in ESCC and esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC), because ALDH1 + cells were highly proliferative and chemoresistant [84,85].…”