Lung cancer stem cells research. Clues from ontogeny

Cancer stem cell (CSC) hypothesis provides us with a new approach to the understanding of carcinogenesis, therapeutics, and prevention strategies. In recent years, the origin and biological characteristics of CSC were widely studied in solid tumors; it is astonishing to find out the delicate relevancy between CSC and committed progenitors evolved from embryonic stem cells (ESC) during organ development. In this review, we propose that some key molecular signal pathways during lung development are crucial for abnormal self-renewal and differentiation of lung cancer stem cell as well as try to elaborate the lung CSCs from the point view of ontogeny.