Road to stemness in hepatocellular carcinoma

Figure 1 One marker is not enough for designate one cell as cancer stem cell. Some markers are reported as representative of HCSCs (CD133, CD13, CD90, CD24, CD44, EpCAM, OV6 and activity of the ALDH family) nevertheless there are main signaling pathways dictating the stemness state. OV6 structure and function is still unknown. Properties or characteristics related of every HCSC marker are listed besides each marker (self-renew, chemoresistence, quiescence, tumorgenicity, etc). Gray lines with double arrows indicate correlation in expression (i.e. Notch and CD90, CD133 and CD13 are overexpressed in the same CSCs population). Straight lines indicate that the molecule or pathway affects directly another molecule or pathway (i.e. CD44 affects directly TGF-β pathway, and TGF-β pathway affects directly AKT/GSK pathway). Doted line indicates that it affects indirectly the molecule or pathway (i.e., CD133 expression affects IL-8/CXCL1 via MAPK/ERK indirect activation).