Up to 70% of Breast Cancer (BC) patients relapse within 5 years. Al-Hajj et al. reported that a
subpopulation of cancer cells, Breast Cancer Stem Cells (BCSCs), has an inherent ability to resist drugs
and cause relapse [1]. The biology of BC have been shown to be different in patients from different
ethnic populations [2]. This racial variation is specifically evident in BCSCs resistance to chemotherapy.
In Vietnam, it was shown that CD44 is the main player in resistance of BCSCs to chemotherapy [3],
whereas in Japan, ALDH1 was proven to have a strong association with resistance to drugs [4]. In this
study, we tested the hypothesis that BCSCs are quantitatively different between European and African
ethnic groups and they use different mechanisms to resist therapy. |
