Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Tumor stem cell plays an important role in the occurrence, development, metastasis and recurrence of tumor. However, due to conventional treatment cannot eliminate breast cancer stem cells, breast cancer stem cells have been assumed to be the origin of treatment failure in breast cancer.
OBJECTIVE:To clarify the biological characteristics of breast cancer stem cells and the curative effects of targeted therapy for breast cancer by some drugs targeting, and then provides some advice for developing treatment strategies that may improve survival rate of breast cancer patients.
METHODS: The articles related to the maker of breast cancer stem cells and identification, new drug for the targeting treatment of breast cancer stem cell from PubMed database between January 2000 and August 2010 were retrieved by the computer with the key words of “breast cancer, cancer stem cells, therapy” in English. Literatures were limited to English language. The literatures included clinical research, basic research, and reviews. A total of 204 literatures were obtained from the computer screen, repetitive researches were excluded, and 33 documents of them were involved for further analysis.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Breast cancer stem cells are the first identified cancer stem cells in solid tumor. Breast cancer stem cells have been isolated successfully by many kinds of strategies, and biological characteristics are gradually studied deeply. Self-renewal and differentiation of breast cancer stem cells are regulated by microenvironment and many signaling pathways. Targeted therapy of breast cancer stem cells is gradually becoming the focus of tumor targeted therapy study.