Available Technologies

Background

Cancer stem cells present in cancer tissue survive treatment with chemotherapy or radiotherapy and cause cancer recurrence and metastasis after treatment due to their self-renewal and cancer-initiating abilities. Therefore, cancer stem cells have been visualized by fluorescence using molecular probes (e.g. Aldefluor™) that react with aldehyde dehydrogenase 1A1 (ALDH1A1), which is highly expressed in stem cells including normal stem cells. This method, however, has a problem of inability to distinguish between normal stem cells and cancer stem cells.

Description and Advantages

Researchers at Kyoto University have developed a novel fluorescent probe (CHO_βgal) that selectively labels cancer stem cells by distinguishing them from normal stem cells.

CHO_βgal has a functional group as a substrate for ALDH1A1 as well as a functional group as a substrate for β-galactosidase, which is highly expressed in cancer cells. When these two functional groups are removed, CHO_βgal emits strong fluorescence in the near-infrared region (647-759 nm). Because no fluorescence is emitted until both groups are removed, cancer stem cells can be identified with a high signal-to-noise ratio (Fig. 1).

Because CHO_βgal does not respond to NSCs, cancer stem cell-specific visualization in both cells (Fig. 2) and tissue (Fig. 3) stainigs are possible.