基于肝干细胞的肝癌生物学研究进展

Research advancement on biology of Liver Cancer based on liver stem cells

肝干细胞是一类具有自我更新能力和分化为肝细胞与胆管细胞能力的肝原始细胞。而原发性肝癌是我国死亡率居第2位的恶性肿瘤。近年在中晚期肝癌中发现了具有干细胞特性的细胞(即肝癌干细胞)存在,并认为肝癌干细胞自我更新机制的失调可能是原发性肝癌发生的因素之一,这种细胞可能与肝癌细胞增殖的维持、转移、放疗和化疗抵抗等现象有关。本文就肝干细胞和肝癌干细胞在原发性肝癌的发生、转移和治疗抵抗中发挥的作用进行综述。

Liver stem cells are a primitive cell population typi cally characterized by the capacity for self-renewal and bi-potential differentiation capability towards both hepatocytes and cholangiocytes.The primary liver cancer is the second fatality rate of malignant tumors in China.It is recently recognized that dysregulation of self-renewal for liver stem cell drives the liver cancer.While a set of cell populations with stem cell properties,termed liver cancer stem cells,is also found to exist in the specimens of liver cancer in advanced stages,which maintain the proliferation of liver cancer cells and is associated with the metastasis of liver cancer as well as chemotherapy and radiotherapy resistance.This review mainly introduced current research upon the role of liver stem cells and liver cancer stem cells in the initiation,metastasis and chemoradiotherapy resistance of primary liver cancer.