Targeting autophagic cancer stem-cells to reverse chemoresistance in human triple negative breast cancer.

ABSTRACT: There is growing evidence for the role of cancer stem-cells in drug resistance, but with few in situ studies on human tumor samples to decipher the mechanisms by which they resist anticancer agents.Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most severe sub-type of breast cancer, occurring in younger women and associated with poor prognosis even when treated at a localized stage.We investigated here the relationship between complete pathological response after chemotherapy and breast cancer stem-cell characteristics in pre-treatment biopsies of 78 women with triple negative breast carcinoma (TNBC).We found that chemoresistance was associated with large numbers of breast cancer stem-cells, and that these cancer stem-cells were neither proliferative nor apoptotic, but in an autophagic state

SUBMITTER: Bousquet G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5471047 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature