Translated by Eric Shi

Recently, Prof. Zeng Yixin, director of Cancer Center of SYSU, and his research colleagues published their research outcomes in American Journal of Biological Chemistry, where they put forward the new origin of cancer stem cells, and proposed that ordinary cancer cells could evolve into cancer stem cells. The research will have an important impact on the medical therapy of cancer treatment.

Cancer stem cells (cancer stem cells, CSC) are considered as the causes of occurrence and reoccurrence of cancer. In the cancer radiotherapy and chemotherapy, ordinary cancer cells are vulnerable to elimination, while CSC have strong resistance against the treatment and it’s hard to get rid of them, which produce new cancer cells like “seed cells”. The existence of CSC always leads to the failure of treatment of cancer cells.

In recent years, Prof. Zeng Yixin, fellow of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his research colleagues took advantage of the research platform provided by the State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China to conduct in-depth research. The research group first discovered the CSC-like cancer cells, which had strong growth and resistance against the radiotherapy and chemotherapy, did exist in nasopharyngeal carcinoma(related research had been published in the American journal Cancer Research).Afterwards, the research group discovered that irradiation of ultraviolet light into the cloned single cell originating from single ordinary cancer cell, or DNA damage chemotherapy drug treatment, could obviously induce the production of CSC-like cancer cells; high expression of genes affecting genomic stability, such as the Mad2, or turning down Aurora B and Cdh1 could also receive a similar effect. A series of research reveals that the instability of genes caused by the damage can positively lead to the transformation of ordinary tumor cells into CSC-like tumor cells. In cancer chemotherapy, DNA damage agents on the one hand may eliminate cancer cells, while on the other hand, they could also exacerbate the instability of genes and lead the transformation of ordinary cancer cells into CSC-like cancer cells.

Prof. Zeng Yixin pointed out that if the hypothesis could be proved by more laboratories, then the treatment therapy of cancer would be different. For example, in cancer treatment, more attention could be paid to maintaining genomic stability so as to as much as possible prevent the transformation of ordinary cancer cells into CSC-like cancer cells. And some of the cancer chemotherapy could lead to the damage of DNA, so researchers should re-evaluate the long-term effect of it, and in particular be cautious about the use of DNA damage agents.

The discovery of Prof. Zeng Yixin and his colleagues have draw widespread media attention, and "Health News", "Nanfang Daily", "Guangzhou Daily", "New Express" have reported on the research, and Sina, Netease, Tecent and other heath websites have also uploaded the news reports.