Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2024 Jul 5;9:170. doi: 10.1038/s41392-024-01851-y

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author(s) 2024

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PMC Copyright notice

Fig. 2 — Origin, formation and/or maintenance of CSCs. CSCs originate from differentiated normal/cancer cells, stem/progenitor cells, or cell-cell fusion of cancer cells with stem cells or cancer cells with differentiated cells. The microenvironment of the CSC niche plays an essential role in the formation and maintenance of CSCs. MSCs, TAMs, MDSCs, and CAFs can secrete cytokines and chemokines that induce and/or maintain stem-like properties of cancer cells. Besides, CAFs can also modulate stemness by secreting EVs, and MSCs can regulate stemness through direct contact with CSCs. Finally, hypoxia and high nitric oxide (NO) concentration also support the CSC niche