Common stemness regulators of embryonic and cancer stem cells

Table 3 Common signaling pathways, transcription factors, non-coding RNAs and epigenetic regulators of embryonic stem cells and cancer stem cells in solid tumors

	ESCs	CSC type
Signaling pathways
Wnt/β-catenin	Self-renewal in mESCs/hESCs[91] Differentiation in hESCs[98]	Brain[104] Breast[103] Colon[99] Lung[475] Prostate[476]
Hedgehog	Self-renewal in mESCs[109] Differentiation in hESCs[108]	Brain[112] Breast[111] Pancreas[115]
Notch	Differentiation in mESCs and hESCs[117]	Brain[126] Breast[128] Colon[125] Pancreas[123]
TGF-β	Activin/Nodal promote self-renewal in mESCs and hESCs[134,135] BMP promotes self-renewal in mESCs[138] and differentiation in hESCs[141]	Brain[158] Breast[157] Skin[133]
FGF	Differentiation in mESCs[164] Self-renewal in hESCs[169]	Bladder[477] Brain[177] Breast[178]
Transcription factors
4-Oct	Self-renewal and pluripotency[198]	Breast[207,210] Lung[70,207] Oral[208] Prostate[209] Cervical[211] Head and neck[212]
Sox2	Self-renewal and pluripotency[215]	Osteosarcoma[218] Ovarian[219] Gastric[220] Pancreatic[221] Prostate[222] Lung[223] Melanoma[224]
Nanog	Self-renewal and pluripotency[226-228]	Breast[250] Oral[208] Lung[234] Colorectal[238,241] Prostate[242] Ovarian[251]
Klf4	Self-renewal and pluripotency[254,256]	Breast[263-265,268] Colorectal[266,267] Pancreatic[267] Brain[269]
c-Myc	Self-renewal and pluripotency[189,191,270]	Brain[283] Lung[284] Rhabdomyosarcoma[285] Prostate[286] Hepatic[287]
DNA methylation regulators
DNMT1	Differentiation[293]	Colon[336] Breast[338]
TET2	Differentiation[315,322]	Breast[344]
Chromatin modifications regulators
EZH2	Self-renewal and pluripotency[186]	Breast[393] Pancreas[393] Brain[395] Prostate[396] Bone[397]
BMI-1	Self-renewal and pluripotency[186]	Prostate[400] Esophageal[401] Head and neck[402] Cervical[403] Colorectal[404] Laryngeal[405] Ovarian[406] Salivary adenoid cystic carcinoma[399]
Suz12	Self-renewal and pluripotency[186]	Breast[407] Colon[408]
MLL1	Self-renewal and pluripotency[186]	Brain[409]
MicroRNAs
Let-7	Differentiation[430,431]	Breast[434] Prostate[448]
MiR-200 family	Differentiation[267]	Breast[437]
MiR-34a	Differentiation[429]	Brain[444] Prostate[448] Pancreatic[451] Gastric[450] Colon[452]
MiR-145	Differentiation[424]	Brain[445] Breast[440]
Long non-coding RNAs
LncRNA-RoR	Self-renewal[418]	Breast[461]

CSC: Cancer stem cell; ESCs: Embryonic stem cells; mESCs: Mouse ESCs; hESCs: Human ESCs.