Gennaro Galizia, Marica Gemei, Margherita Pinto, Anna Zamboli, Andrea Mabilia, Annamaria Auricchio, Michele Orditura, Ferdinando De Vita, Eva Lieto and Ciro Romano
Recent findings suggested the presence in several cancers, comprising colorectal malignancies, of a small subset of tumor-initiating cells, or cancer stem cells. So the isolation and characterization of tumorigenic colorectal cancer cells was extremely important for the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Even if a defined and universally approved phenotype of colorectal cancer stem cells has not been defined yet, several markers have been reported able to isolate cancer stem-like cells. For the majority of these markers, it has not been associated a clear function but more of them seem to be involved in colon cancer stem cell maintenance, survival and proliferation through well known pathways such as the Wnt-β-catenin pathway whose activity has been demonstrated to define colorectal cancer stem cells. Even if the knowledge on colorectal cancer stem cell “functioning” is still little detailed and elusive, the importance to develop new therapeutic strategies that precisely target colorectal cancer stem cells prompted researchers to test different approaches to this aim. We summarize here the phenotypic and functional characteristics associated with colon cancer stem cells along with the approaches experimented to selectively target and kill these cancer cells. We also reviewed innovative approaches targeting colorectal cancer stem cells based on new delivery systems to precisely kill them or also on the combination of conventional therapies with functional dietary elements.
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