Starting from human musculoskeletal sarcomas, we isolated a subset of cells that display cancer stem cell properties. The control of culture conditions is crucial to enhance the isolation of this cell population. Cancer stem cells (CSCs) have emerged as the real responsible for the development, chemoresistance, and metastatic spread of different human cancers, including musculoskeletal sarcomas. However, unlike most leukemias and solid tumors, so far, data on musculoskeletal sarcomas refer to CSCs obtained from established cell lines, and only a few authors have reported on the isolation of CSCs from tissue samples [1-7]. Reasonably due to some peculiar features of mesenchymal tumors, including the lack of unique surface markers that identify tumor progenitors, there are still partial clues on the existence of a CSC population in these cancers. Here, we report the identification of putative CSCs in musculoskeletal sarcomas using the most general accepted isolation method, the sphere culture system. Accordingly to recent reports, we also analyzed the effects of reduced oxygen availability on the behavior of sarcoma CSCs.Summary
Introduction
Since high levels of urokinase-type plasminogen activation system have been associated with cancer metastasis, purpose of this study was to investigate its expression in patients with giant cell tumor and the relationship with outcome.
