Emerging role of exosome signalling in maintaining cancer stem cell dynamic equilibrium

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are a small subset of heterogeneous cells existed in tumour tissues or cancer cell lines with self-renewal and differentiation potentials. CSCs were considered to be responsible for the failure of conventional therapy and tumour recurrence. However, CSCs are not a static cell population, CSCs and non-CSCs are maintained in dynamic interconversion state by their self-differentiation and dedifferentiation. Therefore, targeting CSCs for cancer therapy is still not enough,exploring the mechanism of dynamic interconversion between CSCs and non-CSCs and blocking the interconversion seems to be imperative. Exosomes are 30-100 nm size in diameter extracellular vesicles (EVs) secreted by multiple living cells into the extracellular space. They contain cell-state-specific bioactive materials, including DNA, mRNA, ncRNA, proteins, lipids, etc. with their specific surface markers, such as, CD63, CD81, Alix, Tsg101, etc. Exosomes have been considered as information carriers in cell communication between cancer cells and non-cancer cells, which affect gene expressions and cellular signalling pathways of recipient cells by delivering their contents. Now that exosomes acted as information carriers, whether they played role in maintaining dynamic equilibrium state between CSCs and non-CSCs and their mechanism of activity are unknown. This review summarized the current research advance of exosomes' role in maintaining CSC dynamic interconversion state and their possible mechanism of action, which will provide a better understanding the contribution of exosomes to dedifferentiation and stemness acquisition of non-CSCs, and highlight that exosomes might be taken as the attractive target approaches for cancer therapeutics.