Minireviews
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Stem Cells. Sep 26, 2021; 13(9): 1307-1317
Published online Sep 26, 2021. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v13.i9.1307
Lipid droplets as metabolic determinants for stemness and chemoresistance in cancer
Alba Royo-García, Sarah Courtois, Beatriz Parejo-Alonso, Pilar Espiau-Romera, Patricia Sancho
Alba Royo-García, Sarah Courtois, Beatriz Parejo-Alonso, Pilar Espiau-Romera, Patricia Sancho, Hospital Universitario Miguel Servet, IIS Aragón, Zaragoza 50009, Spain
Author contributions: Royo-García A, Espiau-Romera P, Courtois S and Parejo-Alonso B wrote the manuscript draft; Sancho P designed the study and wrote the final manuscript; all authors designed the figures and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Supported by Miguel Servet Fellowship, No. CP16/00121; FIS (Fondo Investigaciones Sanitarias) grants, No. PI17/00082 and No. PI20/00942, all from Instituto de Salud Carlos III and Cofinanced by European Funds (FSE: “El FSE invierte en tu futuro” and FEDER: “Una manera de hacer Europa,” respectively); and the Worldwide Cancer Research Charity together with Fundación Científica Asociación Española contra el Cáncer (FCAECC), No. 19-0250.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There is no conflict of interest associated with any of the senior author or other co-authors who contributed their efforts in this manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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/
Corresponding author: Patricia Sancho, PhD, Senior Researcher, Hospital Universitario Miguel Servet, IIS Aragón, Isabel la Católica 1-3, Zaragoza 50009, Spain. psancho@iisaragon.es
Received: March 12, 2021
Peer-review started: March 12, 2021
First decision: May 5, 2021
Revised: May 13, 2021
Accepted: August 18, 2021
Article in press: August 18, 2021
Published online: September 26, 2021
Core Tip

Core Tip: Increasing evidence suggests that lipid droplets (LDs) support cancer stem cells (CSCs) functionality at different levels. Indeed, an increased LD content has been linked to tumorigenicity, metastatic spread and chemoresistance in different cancer types, highlighting their value as prognostic and treatment response predictive biomarker. A deeper understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which LDs control these processes would expedite the discovery of novel potentially druggable targets and the design of more efficient therapeutic strategies aimed at eliminating highly tumorigenic CSCs.