AUTHOR=Guha Aishwarya , Goswami Kuntal Kanti , Sultana Jasmine , Ganguly Nilanjan , Choudhury Pritha Roy , Chakravarti Mohona , Bhuniya Avishek , Sarkar Anirban , Bera Saurav , Dhar Sukanya , Das Juhina , Das Tapasi , Baral Rathindranath , Bose Anamika , Banerjee Saptak TITLE=Cancer stem cell–immune cell crosstalk in breast tumor microenvironment: a determinant of therapeutic facet JOURNAL=Frontiers in Immunology VOLUME=14 YEAR=2023 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2023.1245421 DOI=10.3389/fimmu.2023.1245421 ISSN=1664-3224 ABSTRACT=

Breast cancer (BC) is globally one of the leading killers among women. Within a breast tumor, a minor population of transformed cells accountable for drug resistance, survival, and metastasis is known as breast cancer stem cells (BCSCs). Several experimental lines of evidence have indicated that BCSCs influence the functionality of immune cells. They evade immune surveillance by altering the characteristics of immune cells and modulate the tumor landscape to an immune-suppressive type. They are proficient in switching from a quiescent phase (slowly cycling) to an actively proliferating phenotype with a high degree of plasticity. This review confers the relevance and impact of crosstalk between immune cells and BCSCs as a fate determinant for BC prognosis. It also focuses on current strategies for targeting these aberrant BCSCs that could open avenues for the treatment of breast carcinoma.