Cancer stem cells and strategies for targeted drug delivery.

Jin Cao, Shubhmita Bhatnagar, Jiawei Wang, Xueyong Qi, Swayam Prabha, Jayanth Panyam

Drug delivery and translational research 2021 Oct

filter terms:

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are a small proportion of cancer cells with high tumorigenic activity, self-renewal ability, and multilineage differentiation potential. Standard anti-tumor therapies including conventional chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and molecularly targeted therapies are not effective against CSCs, and often lead to enrichment of CSCs that can result in tumor relapse. Therefore, it is hypothesized that targeting CSCs is key to increasing the efficacy of cancer therapies. In this review, CSC properties including CSC markers, their role in tumor growth, invasiveness, metastasis, and drug resistance, as well as CSC microenvironment are discussed. Further, CSC-targeted strategies including the use of targeted drug delivery systems are examined. © 2020. Controlled Release Society.

Citation

Jin Cao, Shubhmita Bhatnagar, Jiawei Wang, Xueyong Qi, Swayam Prabha, Jayanth Panyam. Cancer stem cells and strategies for targeted drug delivery. Drug delivery and translational research. 2021 Oct;11(5):1779-1805