Objectives: Investigators hypothesized that cancer stem cells (CSCs) could play a role in determining cancer progression by metastasizing to cervical lymph node (N+) and then influencing prognosis of head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) patients.
Design: To identify CSCs in HNSCCs and their clonogenic capacity.
Setting: In vitro study.
Participants: Putative CSCs from 29 primary HNSCCs and 19 corresponding node metastases were analyzed.
Main outcome measures: Immunohistochemical (IHC) was performed, and CSCs' clonogenic in vitro capacity was tested; ones epithelial nature of cancer cells forming colonies was confirmed by a second IHC, fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) analysis helped in counting CD44/CD133-CSCs markers percentage expression in HNSCC tumour-derived cultures.
Results: Immunohistochemical showed CD44 (93.1%) and CD133 (10.34%) expression; FACS-analysis showed the enrichment of CD44/CD133 cancer cells, with the highest clonogenic capacity of CD44+-subpopulation; a higher CD44 rates were documented from N+ subcultures than from original tumours (P < 0.05).
Conclusions: A putative cancer stem-like cell population is detectable in HNSCCs, and our findings show their in vitro clonogenic capacity by demonstrating that CD44+-cultured cells are the main population proliferating obtained by N+ HNSCC metastases, emphasizing their possible role in tumour progression.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.