Detection of putative stem cells markers, CD44/CD133, in primary and lymph node metastases in head and neck squamous cell carcinomas. A preliminary immunohistochemical and in vitro study.

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.putative CSCs from 29 primary HNSCCs, and 19 corresponding node metastases were identified by immunohistochemical (IHC) and their clonogenic in vivo 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 tumor-derived cultures.IHC 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 tumors (p<0.05).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 tumor progression. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.