Breast cancers, mammary stem cells, and cancer stem cells, characteristics, and hypotheses.

ABSTRACT: The cellular heterogeneity of breast cancers still represents a major therapeutic challenge. The latest genomic studies have classified breast cancers in distinct clusters to inform the therapeutic approaches and predict clinical outcomes. The mammary epithelium is composed of luminal and basal cells, and this seemingly hierarchical organization is dependent on various stem cells and progenitors populating the mammary gland. Some cancer cells are conceptually similar to the stem cells as they can self-renew and generate bulk populations of nontumorigenic cells. Two models have been proposed to explain the cell of origin of breast cancer and involve either the reprogramming of differentiated mammary cells or the dysregulation of mammary stem cells or progenitors. Both hypotheses are not exc

SUBMITTER: Taurin S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7586061 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature