The significance of cancer stem cells (CSCs), a rare population of cells in tumor tissues, in biology and the treatment of solid malignancies has been widely appreciated for more than two decades. Due to a peculiar self-renewal capability, even one single cancer stem cell can grow into a bulk tumor mass. For this reason, CSCs have long been blamed as the major culprit of tumor initiation, tumor progression, treatment resistance, metastasis, and recurrence. Therefore, it has been postulated that targeting CSCs could provide tremendous clinical benefits for patients with solid tumors. Accumulating studies corroborated that CSCs maintained a tight regulation of redox homeostasis and that the fate of CSCs was extremely sensitive to elevated oxidative stress. Accordingly, a plethora of therapeutic drugs that can generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been leveraged to target CSCs. Nonetheless, few drugs or formulations that are capable of elevating oxidative stress have achieved clinical success for eliminating CSCs thus far.

中文翻译：

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用羟乙基淀粉智能纳米药物促进氧化应激以消除癌症干细胞


癌症干细胞 （CSCs） 是肿瘤组织中一种罕见的细胞群，在生物学和实体恶性肿瘤治疗中的重要性已得到广泛认可。由于独特的自我更新能力，即使是单个癌症干细胞也可以生长成一个大块的肿瘤块。因此，CSCs 长期以来一直被认为是肿瘤发生、肿瘤进展、治疗耐药、转移和复发的罪魁祸首。因此，据推测，靶向 CSCs 可以为实体瘤患者提供巨大的临床益处。越来越多的研究证实，CSCs 保持对氧化还原稳态的严格调节，并且 CSCs 的命运对升高的氧化应激极为敏感。因此，大量可以产生活性氧 （ROS） 的治疗药物已被用于靶向 CSC。尽管如此，迄今为止，很少有能够提高氧化应激的药物或制剂在消除 CSCs 方面取得临床成功。