细胞-细胞融合是一种动态的生物学现象,在各种生理过程中起着重要作用,如组织再生。同样,正常细胞,特别是骨髓来源的细胞(BMDCs),可能试图与癌细胞融合以拯救它们。救援可能会失败,但是融合的细胞最终获得了BMDCs的运动性特征,并由于由此产生的基因组不稳定性而变得转移。事实上,细胞-细胞融合被证明在体内癌症中发生,并被发现促进肿瘤转移。然而,它的存在和作用可能被低估了,并没有得到广泛认可。在本次审查中,强调了细胞融合研究的里程碑,评估了癌症体内和体外细胞融合的证据,并总结了目前对细胞融合发生的分子机制的理解,强调它们在肿瘤转移中的重要作用。本综述提供的总结可能会促进对这一过程的进一步研究,并导致对未来肿瘤转移治疗策略的新发现。
Cell‑cell fusion is a dynamic biological phenomenon, which plays an important role in various physiological processes, such as tissue regeneration. Similarly, normal cells, particularly bone marrow‑derived cells (BMDCs), may attempt to fuse with cancer cells to rescue them. The rescue may fail, but the fused cells end up gaining the motility traits of BMDCs and become metastatic due to the resulting genomic instability. In fact, cell‑cell fusion was demonstrated to occur in vivo in cancer and was revealed to promote tumor metastasis. However, its existence and role may be underestimated, and has not been widely acknowledged. In the present
review, the milestones in cell fusion research were highlighted, the evidence for cell‑cell fusion in vitro and in vivo in cancer was evaluated, and the current understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which cell‑cell fusion occurs was summarized, to emphasize their important role in tumor metastasis. The summary provided in the present
review may promote further study into this process and result in novel discoveries of strategies for future treatment of tumor metastasis.