RESEARCH ARTICLE
Immunotherapy Targeted at Brain Cancer Stem Cells
Masahiro Toda*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2010Volume: 3
First Page: 48
Last Page: 50
Publisher Id: TOCIJ-3-48
DOI: 10.2174/1876401001003010048
Article History:
Received Date: 15/06/2009Revision Received Date: 08/02/2010
Acceptance Date: 09/09/2010
Electronic publication date: 31/12/2010
Collection year: 2010
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Progress in stem cell research has been associated with the discovery of the presence of cancer stem cells in a variety of malignant tumors, and because these cells are resistant to anticancer agents and radiotherapy, analysis of their properties has been rapidly pursued as an important target for the treatment of cancers, including malignant brain tumors. Brain cancer stem cells (BCSCs) have been isolated from brain tumor tissue and brain tumor cell lines by using neural stem cell culture methods. Analyzing the properties of BCSCs is extremely important to developing treatment methods that target BCSCs. Although no treatment method targeting BCSCs has yet been established, several methods have been proposed based on their cell-biological characteristics. This article describes therapeutic strategies that target drug-resistance molecules and stem-cell-associated molecules as well as immunotherapy targeted at BCSCs.