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Abstract
The cancerous stem cells (CSCs) play important role in tumor progression, metastasis, and relapse of cancer disease. These cells provide resistance to the therapies like chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and hormonal therapy. The breast tissue CSCs (BCSCs) are CD44+/CD24-/low/ESA+ cells with high aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) activity and possess the property of mammosphere formation. The ALDH1A1 isoform plays significant role in mammosphere formation and glycolytic restriction is found to enhance the ALDH activity thus supporting the maintenance of BCSCs. Many factors regulate the CSC population and promote their stemness such as protein homeobox-D3 (HOXD3), Sirt-1, B7-H3 etc. Many pathways also regulate the BCSC development like MAPK kinase pathway, STAT3/IL-6 pathway, wnt/β-catenin pathway, sonic hedgehog signaling (shh) pathway etc. This mini-review focuses on the latest developments in the study of CSCs involved in breast cancer (BC) development and the therapies targeting the CSCs.