Cancer stem cells detection and prognosis in early stages NSCLC

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundDespite advances in diagnosis and treatment in lung cancer, therapies still fail to improve patient management due to resistance mechanisms and relapses. As Cancer stem cells (CSCs) directly contribute to tumor growth and therapeutic resistance, their clinical detection represents a major challenge. However specific and additional CSC markers lack. Thus, our aim was to achieve selective detection of CSCs with specific glycan patterns and assess the CSCs burden to predict the risk of relapse in NSCLC tumors.MethodsThe lung CSCs detection and sorting were assessed throughin vitroandin vivoexperiments with a lectin MIX. Then, its clinical significance was evaluated with immunohistochemistry on tissue microarrays in a retrospective study with 221 NSCLC patients.ResultsWe showed a significant CSCs enrichment in the MIX+ sorted fraction compared to CD133+ cells and confirmed its high tumorigenic capacity. Retrospective study validated the MIX prognostic value on the overall survival from early stages patients. These results suggest its potential for detecting tumor aggressiveness and complementing the current tumor classification.ConclusionOur results demonstrate that CSCs identified MIX might afford a prognostic tool which enable clinicians to better classify early-stage patients with high-risk of relapse in order to adapt treatment decisions.