Tumor microenvironment of cancer stem cells: Perspectives on cancer stem cell targeting

There are few tumor cell subpopulations with stem cell characteristics in tumor tis -sue, defined as cancer stem cells (CSCs) or cancer stem-like cells (CSLCs), which can recon-struct neoplasms with malignant biological behaviors such as invasiveness via self-renewal and unlimited generation. The microenvironment that CSCs depend on consists of various cellular components and corresponding medium components. Among these factors existing at a variety of levels and forms, cytokine networks and numerous signal pathways play an important role in signaling transduction. These factors promote or maintain cancer cell stem-ness, and participate in cancer recurrence, metastasis, and resistance. This review aims to summarize the recent molecular data concerning the multilayered relationship between CSCs and CSC-favorable microenvironments. We also discuss the therapeutic implications of target-ing this synergistic interplay, hoping to give an insight into targeting cancer cell stemness for tumor therapy and prognosis.(c) 2023 The Authors. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).