Figure 1.

Identification of stemness in pancreatic cancer stem cells (CSCs). Pancreatic CSCs can be identified and sorted by surface markers such as EpCAM, CD44, CD24, CD133, CXCR4, and ALDH, as well as side population assays. Functional analysis either in vivo or in vitro should be performed to show the potential of tumor initiation, clonogenic growth metastases and/or invasion. Genomic and proteomic profiling assays help to analyze the RNA and protein expression and regulation. This figure was drawn according to references [9,11,13,14,15,16].