利用纳米技术靶向肿瘤干细胞的研究进展

Applications of nanotechnology in targeting cancer stem cells

肿瘤作为一个复杂的组织,其中的肿瘤干细胞在肿瘤的生长、转移和复发过程中发挥至关重要的作用,因此靶向肿瘤干细胞治疗为肿瘤治愈提供了新的思路.新兴的纳米技术为克服传统药物的局限、有效靶向与杀伤肿瘤干细胞创造了可能.本文概述了肿瘤干细胞的特点,总结了目前靶向肿瘤干细胞的药物研究进展,并对靶向肿瘤干细胞纳米技术的应用进行了总结与展望.

Previous studies have suggested that many cancers are consisted of both non-cancer stem cells and cancer stem cells（CSCs）,a small population with high tumorigenicity and intrinsic drug resistance. CSCs have some characteristics similar to normal stem cells,such as self-renewing and differentiating to other cell types. CSCs are responsible to tumor recurrence and metastasis. Targeting CSCs is a promising approach to cure cancers. However,CSCs usually overexpress the multidrug resistance（MDR） gene and quiescent in G0 state which make traditional chemotherapies have less effect on CSCs. With nanotechnologies developed,new nanocarrier-based medicines show unique advantages in circulation times,stability and bioavailability compared to traditional drugs. So,more and more researchers develop new strategies based on nanotechnology to target CSCs and reduce cancer relapse and metastasis. Those strategies include（1） nanocarriers deliver CSC-targeting drugs（small molecules,si RNA） to tumor tissues which inhibit signaling pathways essential for CSCs,（2） modified nanocarriers deliver drugs to CSCs to improve killing efficiency of drugs to CSCs,（3） physical methods,such as heat or magnetic,directly kill CSCs based on the characteristic features of nano-particles. Despite of these remarkable advances in targeting CSCs with nanotechnology recently,there are still a lot to do to move these to the clinic. This review summarized the research progress about CSCs,traditional drugs on CSC-targeting therapies,and the new approaches to target CSCs with nanotechnologies. In the end,we discussed the prospect of applications of nanotechnology in clinic.