1. Cancer cell plasticity: Impact on tumor progression and therapy response
- Author
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Marta Lopez-Cerda, Laura Lorenzo-Sanz, Victoria da Silva-Diz, Purificación Muñoz, and Adrià Bernat-Peguera
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Cancer Research ,Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition ,Cell ,Cell Plasticity ,Biology ,Metastasis ,03 medical and health sciences ,Neoplasms ,medicine ,Tumor Microenvironment ,Humans ,Tumor microenvironment ,Mechanism (biology) ,Cancer ,Genetic Variation ,Cell Differentiation ,medicine.disease ,030104 developmental biology ,medicine.anatomical_structure ,Tumor progression ,Cancer cell ,Cancer research ,Disease Progression ,Neoplastic Stem Cells ,Signal Transduction - Abstract
Most tumors exhibit intra-tumor heterogeneity, which is associated with disease progression and an impaired response to therapy. Cancer cell plasticity has been proposed as being an important mechanism that, along with genetic and epigenetic alterations, promotes cancer cell diversity and contributes to intra-tumor heterogeneity. Plasticity endows cancer cells with the capacity to shift dynamically between a differentiated state, with limited tumorigenic potential, and an undifferentiated or cancer stem-like cell (CSC) state, which is responsible for long-term tumor growth. In addition, it confers the ability to transit into distinct CSC states with different competence to invade, disseminate and seed metastasis. Cancer cell plasticity has been linked to the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition program and relies not only on cell-autonomous mechanisms, but also on signals provided by the tumor microenvironment and/or induced in response to therapy. We provide an overview of the dynamic transition for cancer cell states, the mechanisms governing cell plasticity and their impact on tumor progression, metastasis and therapy response. Understanding the mechanisms involved in cancer cell plasticity will provide insights for establishing new therapeutic interventions.
- Published
- 2018