Effect of CD133/prominin-1 antisense oligodeoxynucleotide on in vitro growth characteristics of Huh-7 human hepatocarcinoma cells and U251 human glioma cells.

The stem cell marker CD133/prominin-1, is a pentaspan membrane glycoprotein, which has also been identified as a cancer stem cell (CSC) marker in several solid tumor types, including those of the prostate, liver, colon and brain. The function of CD133 in these tumors is still unknown. We hypothesize that the function of CD133 is correlated with the characteristics of the CD133+ CSCs and may affect the growth of the tumor cell population as a whole. In this study we used antisense oligodeoxynucleotides (ASODNs) of CD133 to knock-down (KD) CD133 expression. We showed that the CD133-KD inhibited proliferation of U251 human glioma cells, decreased the colony forming ability and altered the cell cycle distribution in Huh-7 human hepatocellular carcinoma cells. Our data suggest that CD133 may play an important functional role in the growth of these tumor cells. Moreover, this study also showed that prominin-2, another protein in the same family as CD133/prominin-1, may not have a similar function.