Nonlinear growth kinetics of breast cancer stem cells: Implications for cancer stem cell targeted therapy

Xinfeng Liu*, Sara Johnson, Shou Liu, Deepak Kanojia, Wei Yue, Udai Singn, Qian Wang, Qing Nie, Hexin Chen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

36 Scopus citations

Abstract

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) have been identified in primary breast cancer tissues and cell lines. The CSC population varies widely among cancerous tissues and cell lines, and is often associated with aggressive breast cancers. Despite of intensive research, how the CSC population is regulated within a tumor is still not well understood so far. In this paper, we present a mathematical model to explore the growth kinetics of CSC population both in vitro and in vivo. Our mathematical models and supporting experiments suggest that there exist non-linear growth kinetics of CSCs and negative feedback mechanisms to control the balance between the population of CSCs and that of non-stem cancer cells. The model predictions can help us explain a few long-standing questions in the field of cancer stem cell research, and can be potentially used to predict the efficicacy of anti-cancer therapy.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number2473
JournalScientific reports
Volume3
DOIs
StatePublished - 2013

Funding

The authors thank Dr. Rachel Schiff at the Baylor College of Medicine for providing MCF7/ neo and MCF7/HER2-18 cell lines and Dr. Pang-Kuo Lo for technical assistance on FACS analysis. This work was supported by the American Cancer Society Research Award (RSG-10-067-01-TBE) and NIH grant (1R01CA178386) to HC, by NSF grant (DMS1019544) to XL, by NIH grants (R01GM67247 and P50GM76516) and NSF grant (DMS 1161621) to QN, and by NSF grant (DMS-0908330, DMS-1200487, CMMI-0849317) and NIH grant (2R01GM078994-05A1) to QW1and a SC/EPSCOR GEAR award to QW1 and XL.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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