Cancer Stem-Cells Patents in the Context of their Therapeutic Purposes: Exploring the Latest Trends (2011-2015)

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are believed to cause cancer recurrence because they resist conventional therapies and restart the growth of tumor cells. CSCs has a specific biological behavior, mainly due to a deregulation of the self-renewal capacity. These cells differ in division and the cell cycle, replication capacity in DNA repair, and deregulation of signaling pathways. Collectively, these results give CSC a malignant phenotype. This review focuses on CSCs oncology patents in the years 2011-2015. Because many inventions have recently been registered in relation to stem cells, our attention focuses on cancer-utility CSCs patents. The patents selected have been analyzed based on their therapeutic usefulness in the area of cancer, and we have detected a clear increase in interest, so that the data of patent applications filed in 2014 is highly significant. Compared with the total for 2013, patents have multiplied by 8.01. On the other hand, 59.57% of all selected patents were useful in oncology in general, opening new therapeutic perspectives for identifying CSCs. We also analyzed the interests of different countries in advancing knowledge in the area of the CSCs as a therapeutic tool for tumors. Some 38% of these patents are registered in the EU, while other countries showed fewer patents in this field of pathologies.