The Expressions of Cancer Stem Cell Markers and Nonclassical HLA antigens in Breast Tumors

Objective: There is a strong relationship between the cancer stem cells (CSCs) and poor prognosis, metastasis and recurrence. In addition to this CSCs are resistant to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Therefore, current treatment approaches may be ineffective to elimination of CSCs. The tumor cells have various adaptations for escaping from immune cells. The human leukocyte antigen (HLA) -G, which expressions restricted with fetal tissues and HLA-E are kind of tumor immune evasive adaptations. In this study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between the CSCs and immune evasive adaptations of breast tumors.Methods: We immunohistochemically evaluated that the expressions of cluster of differentiation (CD) 44, CD133, Homeobox protein Nanog, octamerbinding transcription factor (Oct) 3/4, HLA-G and HLA-E in the advanced stage breast cancer tissues (n=10) and the non-malignant breast biopsies (n=10).Results: We detected that the significantly increased expressions of especially Nanog (p