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Detection of Cancer Stem Cells in Normal and Dysplastic/Leukemic Human Blood

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Cancer Stem Cells

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 2777))

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Abstract

The hierarchical organization of the leukemic stem cells (LSCs) is identical to that of healthy counterpart cells. It may be split into roughly three stages: a small number of pluripotent stem cells at the top, few lineage-restricted cells in the middle, and several terminally differentiated blood cells at the bottom. Although LSCs can differentiate into the hematopoietic lineage, they can also accumulate as immature progenitor cells, also known as blast cells. Since blast cells are uncommon in healthy bloodstreams, their presence might be a sign of cancer. For instance, a 20% blast cutoff in peripheral blood or bone marrow is formally used to distinguish acute myeloid leukemia from myelodysplastic neoplasms, which is essential to plan the patients’ management. Many techniques may be useful for blast enumeration: one of them is flow cytometry, which can perform analyses on many cells by detecting the expression of cell surface markers. Leukemic and non-leukemic blast cells might indeed be characterized by the same surface markers, but these markers are usually differently expressed. Here we propose to use CD45, in combination with CD34 and other cell surface markers, to identify and immunophenotype blast cells in patient-derived samples.

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Author notes

  1. Authors Alessia De Stefano and Alessandra Cappellini have equally contributed to this chapter.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cellular Signalling Laboratory, Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Alessia De Stefano, Alessandra Cappellini, Irene Casalin, Maria Vittoria Marvi, Antonietta Fazio, Irene Neri, Foteini-Dionysia Koufi, Stefano Ratti, Lucia Manzoli, Lucio Cocco & Matilde Y. Follo

  2. IRCCS – Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria di Bologna, Istituto di Ematologia “Seràgnoli”, Bologna, Italy

    Stefania Paolini, Sarah Parisi, Carlo Finelli & Antonio Curti

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  1. Alessia De Stefano
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  15. Matilde Y. Follo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matilde Y. Follo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, Surgery and Dentistry “Scuola Medica Salernitana”, University of Salerno, Baronissi, Italy

    Federica Papaccio

  2. Department of Experimental Medicine, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy

    Gianpaolo Papaccio

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© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

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De Stefano, A. et al. (2024). Detection of Cancer Stem Cells in Normal and Dysplastic/Leukemic Human Blood. In: Papaccio, F., Papaccio, G. (eds) Cancer Stem Cells. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2777. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3730-2_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3730-2_12

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  • Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-3729-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-3730-2

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