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Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jul 14, 2016; 22(26): 5971-6007
Published online Jul 14, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i26.5971
Pancreatic cancer stem cell markers and exosomes - the incentive push
Sarah Heiler, Zhe Wang, Margot Zöller
Sarah Heiler, Zhe Wang, Margot Zöller, Tumor Cell Biology, University Hospital of Surgery, D 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
Author contributions: Zöller M wrote the first draft and the final version; Heiler S and Wang Z contributed to writing and final version approving.
Supported by Wilhelm Sander Stiftung to Zöller M, No. 2009.100.2; German Cancer Research Aid to Zöller M, No. 110836; and China Scholarship Council to Wang Z, CSC 201408080067.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Margot Zöller, Tumor Cell Biology, University Hospital of Surgery, Im Neuenheimer Feld 365, D 69120 Heidelberg, Germany. m.zoeller@uni-hd.de
Telephone: +49-6210-565146 Fax: +49-6210-565199
Received: March 19, 2016
Peer-review started: March 22, 2016
First decision: May 30, 2016
Revised: June 3, 2016
Accepted: June 28, 2016
Article in press: June 28, 2016
Published online: July 14, 2016
Processing time: 109 Days and 10.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Cancer progression relies on a small population of cancer stem cells (CSC), characterized by longevity, self renewal, drug resistance and requirement of a niche. In addition, CSC abundantly deliver exosomes (TEX) allowing CSC a long distance communication. At the descriptive level, CSC are characterized by a set of so called CSC markers. We here discuss for pancreatic cancer that the CSC markers CD44v6, c-Met, Tspan8, alpha6beta4, EpCAM, claudin7, CXCR4 and prominin1 can in a concerted activity account for all CSC features. This includes CSC TEX activity due to the engagement of CSC markers in TEX biogenesis and enrichment in TEX.