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Preclinical Prevention Studies: Organ Site-Specific Investigations: Head and Neck Cancers

Is there a role for stem cells in recurrent squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck?

UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA

Abstract

B218

Stem cells have the remarkable potential to develop into many different cell types in the body, and can theoretically divide without limit to replenish other cells as long as the person or animal is still alive. An increasing body of research is showing that cancers might contain their own stem cells. In fact, cancer cells, like stem cells, can proliferate indefinitely through a deregulated cellular self-renewal capacity. This raises the possibility that some features of tumor cells may be due to cancer stem cells. Stem cell-like cancer cells were isolated from several solid tumors, and new evidence has shown that brain cancers contain cells that may be multipotent neural stem cell-like cells. Researchers have successfully grown adult olfactory stem cells harvested from the human nose, but so far there is no evidence supportting that head and neck cancers are derived from multispecialized, pluripotential cells. In this review, we discuss the possibility of some molecular leads and poteins involved in carcinogenic pathways that could be involved in stem cell physiopathology of head and neck cancer.