Objective:As cancer stem cells (CSCs) are considered as the origin of tumor development, recurrence, and drug resistance, we aimed to explore the mechanism related to modulating stemness in CSCs, thus facilitating to search for new therapeutic strategy for ovarian cancer.
Methods:In this study, ovarian cancer stem cells (OCSCs) induced from cell line 3AO and A2780 were enriched in serum-free medium (SFM). The effect of SURF4 on CSC-like properties was evaluated by sphere-forming assays, re-differentiation assays, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction, flow cytometry, Western blotting, cell viability assays and in vivo xenograft experiments. The downstream molecule participating in SURF4 maintaining stemness was screened by RNA-sequencing and identified by the experiments of gene function.