CD49f(high) cells retain sphere-forming and tumor-initiating activities in human gastric tumors.

Identification of gastric tumor-initiating cells (TICs) is essential to explore new therapies for gastric cancer patients. There are reports that gastric TICs can be identified using the cell surface marker CD44 and that they form floating spheres in culture, but we could not obtain consistent results with our patient-derived tumor xenograft (PDTX) cells. We thus searched for another marker for gastric TICs, and found that CD49f(high) cells from newly-dissected gastric cancers formed tumors with histological features of parental ones while CD49f(low) cells did not when subcutaneously injected into immunodeficient mice. These results indicate that CD49f, a subunit of laminin receptors, is a promising marker for human gastric TICs. We established a primary culture system for PDTX cells where only CD49f(high) cells could grow on extracellular matrix (ECM) to form ECM-attaching spheres. When injected into immunodeficient mice, these CD49f(high) sphere cells formed tumors with histological features of parental ones, indicating that only TICs could grow in the culture system. Using this system, we found that some sphere-forming TICs were more resistant than gastric tumor cell lines to chemotherapeutic agents, including doxorubicin, 5-fluorouracil and doxifluridine. There was a patient-dependent difference in the tumorigenicity of sphere-forming TICs and their response to anti-tumor drugs. These results suggest that ECM plays an essential role for the growth of TICs, and that this culture system will be useful to find new drugs targeting gastric TICs.