Resistance of primary breast cancer cells with enhanced pluripotency and stem cell activity to sex hormonal stimulation and suppression.

CONCLUSION: Breast cancer cells can develop a pluripotent program with enhanced stemness activity that may together contribute to universal resistance to sex hormonal stimulation or deprivation. Isolation and characterization of patient-derived breast cancer stem cells in large clinical studies is therefore crucial to identify new targets for endocrine therapies, potentially directed towards stemness and pluripotency markers. Such direction may help overcoming endocrine resistance and draw attention to breast cancer stem cells' behaviour under endogenous and exogenous sex hormones throughout a woman's reproductive life. PMID: 30359767 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: The International Journal of Biochemistry and Cell Biology - Category: Biochemistry Authors: Tags: Int J Biochem Cell Biol Source Type: research