Published online Mar 26, 2015. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v7.i2.461
Peer-review started: August 15, 2014
First decision: September 28, 2014
Revised: October 29, 2014
Accepted: October 31, 2014
Article in press: November 3, 2014
Published online: March 26, 2015
Processing time: 217 Days and 15.3 Hours
Cancer is a highly heterogeneous group of diseases that despite improved treatments remain prevalent accounting for over 14 million new cases and 8.2 million deaths per year. Studies into the process of carcinogenesis are limited by lack of appropriate models for the development and pathogenesis of the disease based on human tissues. Primary culture of patient samples can help but is difficult to grow for a number of tissues. A potential opportunity to overcome these barriers is based on the landmark study by Yamanaka which demonstrated the ability of four factors; Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc to reprogram human somatic cells in to pluripotency. These cells were termed induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and display characteristic properties of embryonic stem cells. This technique has a wide range of potential uses including disease modelling, drug testing and transplantation studies. Interestingly iPSCs also share a number of characteristics with cancer cells including self-renewal and proliferation, expression of stem cell markers and altered metabolism. Recently, iPSCs have been generated from a number of human cancer cell lines and primary tumour samples from a range of cancers in an attempt to recapitulate the development of cancer and interrogate the underlying mechanisms involved. This review will outline the similarities between the reprogramming process and carcinogenesis, and how these similarities have been exploited to generate iPSC models for a number of cancers.
Core tip: Human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) represent a novel method for studying the mechanisms of cancer development and progression. Recently, a number of studies have generated iPSCs from human cancer cells and cell lines, which can then be used as a model for carcinogenesis. This review outlines the similarities that exist between pluripotent and malignant cells and summarizes available studies that have generated iPSC models of cancer.