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Updated: Dec 21, 2025

Isolation and Functional Assessment of Human Breast Cancer Stem Cells from Cell and Tissue Samples
Published on: October 2, 2020
Influence of Innate Immunity on Cancer Cell Stemness
Anna Pastò1, Francesca Maria Consonni2, Antonio Sica1,2
1Department of Inflammation and Immunology, Humanitas Clinical and Research Center-IRCCS-, via Manzoni 56, 20089 Rozzano (MI), Italy.
Abstract:
Even if cancer stem cells (CSCs) represent only a small proportion of the tumor mass, they significantly account for tumor maintenance, resistance to therapies, relapse and metastatic spread, due to their increased capacity of self-renewal, multipotency, tumorigenicity and quiescence. Emerging evidence suggests that the immune contexture within the tumor microenvironment (TME) determines both the response to therapy and the clinical outcome. In this context, CSCs acquire immune evasion skills by editing immune cell functions and sculpting the immunosuppressive landscape of TME. Reciprocally, infiltrating immune cells influence CSCs self-renewal, tumorigenicity and metastasis. In this review, we summarize the immunomodulatory properties of CSCs, as well as the impact of innate immune cells on cancer cells stemness in the different phases of cancer immunoediting process and neoplastic progression.
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