Cancer Stem Cells: From an Insight into the Basics to Recent Advances and Therapeutic Targeting

Table 3

Dissimilarities between NSCs and CSCs [5, 7, 9, 10].

Characteristic features	Normal stem cells	Cancer stem cells
Occurrence	Present in the small percentage among all adult normal tissues and organs like skin/hair follicles, heart, and mammary glands	Present in small percentage within the tumor in the human breast, lung, liver, gall bladder, and brain cancers
Origin	Derived from embryonic and adult stem cells	Not specific.; They are likely to have arisen from the pool of normal stem or their precursor in tissues following mutations
Self-renewal property	Extensive proliferative potential with limited growth	Extensive proliferative potential with indefinite growth
Differentiation property	Highly regulated	Highly dysregulated that can initiate tumorigenesis
Stem cell niche	Supportive and provides homeostasis maintenance	Altered and deregulated due to dominant proliferation-promoting signals
Chromosomal arrangement	Stable and normally diploid with relatively long telomeres	Aneuploid having short telomeres
Therapeutic treatments	Moderately sensitive	Highly resistant
Function	Maintaining tissue homeostasis and regenerating damaged tissue	Recurrence and progression of tumor; Providing resistance against cell death and conventional therapies