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Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Oct 7, 2017; 23(37): 6750-6776
Published online Oct 7, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i37.6750
Road to stemness in hepatocellular carcinoma
Teresita NJ Flores-Téllez, Saúl Villa-Treviño, Carolina Piña-Vázquez
Teresita NJ Flores-Téllez, Saúl Villa-Treviño, Carolina Piña-Vázquez, Departamento de Biología Celular, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (CINVESTAV-IPN), Av. IPN No. 2508 Col. San Pedro Zacatenco CP 07360, Ciudad de México, México
Author contributions: All authors equally contributed to this paper with conception and design of the study, literature review and analysis, drafting and critical revision and editing, and final approval of the final version.
Supported by CONACyT Mexico grant, No. 2015-01-599.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No conflicts 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: Carolina Piña-Vázquez, PhD, Departamento de Biología Celular, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (CINVESTAV-IPN), Av. IPN No. 2508 Col., San Pedro Zacatenco CP 07360, Ciudad de México, Mexico. caropv@cell.cinvestav.mx
Telephone: +52-55-57473800-5577
Received: April 1, 2017
Peer-review started: April 9, 2017
First decision: April 26, 2017
Revised: May 27, 2017
Accepted: July 22, 2017
Article in press: July 24, 2017
Published online: October 7, 2017
Processing time: 180 Days and 5 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: In agreement with their dominant role in liver regeneration, mature hepatocytes are emerging as the cell of origin of hepatocellular carcinoma. The relationship between the cancer cell of origin (CCO) and hepatic cancer stem cell is unknown. There is a dynamic interconversion among different cancer stem cells (CSCs), and between CSC and non-CSCs. Because of that, CSC-state is currently defined as a description of a highly adaptable and dynamic intrinsic property of tumor cells, instead of a static subpopulation of a tumor. This CSC heterogeneity and dynamism makes them out reach from therapeutic protocols directed to a single target.