An Overview of Lipid Droplets in Cancer and Cancer Stem Cells

Figure 4

The schematic model depicts the hypothetic CSC niche (on the left) in human tumors. The main elements are summarized: (i) the cellular components, such as CSCs, cancer cells, adipocytes, immune cells, and stroma cells [e.g., cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs)]; (ii) ECM components: collagen, laminin, and so forth; and (iii) soluble factors (growth factors, proinflammatory cytokines, chemokines, exosomes, etc.) release from different cell types and nutrient supply from vasculature. A CSC (on the right) shows higher amount of LDs compared with other cells. Within tumor bulk, hypoxia develops due to limited vascularization. A continuous interplay among different factors inside the niche, including hypoxic/normoxic conditions, nutrient supply availability, the release of soluble factors, and cell‐cell interactions contributes to determine the CSC properties and influences their metabolic plasticity, as reviewed in [143, 163, 166, 174]. A single cancerous LD (bottom) is also schematically represented, based on [121, 178].