Abstract

Doc number: 722

Abstract

Background: Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are thought to play important roles in therapy-resistance. In this study, we induced cancer stem-like cells from hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cell lines using a unique medium, and examined their potential for resistance to anti-cancer drugs.

Methods: The human HCC cell lines SK-HEP-1 (SK), HLE, Hep 3B, and HuH-7 were used to induce cancer stem-like cells with our sphere induction medium supplemented with neural survival factor-1. NANOG and LIN28A were examined as stemness markers. Several surface markers for CSC such as CD24, CD44, CD44 variant, and CD90 were analyzed by flow-cytometry. To assess the resistance to anti-cancer drugs, the MTS assay, cell cycle analysis, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) activity assay were performed.

Results: Poorly differentiated HCC derived SK and undifferentiated HCC derived HLE cell lines efficiently formed spheres of cells (SK-sphere and HLE-sphere), but well-differentiated HCC-derived HuH-7 and Hep 3B cells did not. SK-spheres showed increased NANOG , LIN28A , and ALDH1A1 mRNA levels compared to parental cells. We observed more CD44 variant-positive cells in SK-spheres than in parental cells. The cell viability of SK-spheres was significantly higher than that of SK cells in the presence of several anti-cancer drugs except sorafenib (1.7- to 7.3-fold, each P < 0.05). The cell cycle of SK-spheres was arrested at the G0/G1 phase compared to SK cells. SK-spheres showed higher ABCG2 and HIF1A mRNA expression and lower ROS production compared to parental cells.

Conclusion: Our novel method successfully induced cancer stem-like cells, which possessed chemoresistance that was related to the cell cycle, drug efflux, and ROS.

Details

Title
Cancer stem-like sphere cells induced from de-differentiated hepatocellular carcinoma-derived cell lines possess the resistance to anti-cancer drugs
Author
Hashimoto, Noriaki; Tsunedomi, Ryouichi; Yoshimura, Kiyoshi; Watanabe, Yusaku; Hazama, Shoichi; Oka, Masaaki
Pages
722
Publication year
2014
Publication date
2014
Publisher
BioMed Central
e-ISSN
14712407
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2407-14-722
ProQuest document ID
1586046627
Copyright
© 2014 Hashimoto et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.