Increased CD44 expression in low-dose chemotherapeutic treated colon cancer cells is controlled by ELF3

Background: It has been considered that long-term exposure to chemotherapeutic drugs would cause the development of resistance in colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. Though the detailed mechanism for this process is varied under different circumstances, the existence of cancer stem cells (CSCs) in CRC tissues has been proposed to be one of the reasons. Methods: In this study, low dose of fluorouracil (IC10 of 5-FU) treatment against colon cancer cells had been used to mimic the situation occurred in vivo when the cancer patients were received chemotherapy. RNA-seq analysis were then performed in IC10 of 5-FU treated HCT-8 cells.