Study shows the pivotal role that stem cells have in cancer:
"Leukemia patients whose cancers express higher levels of genes associated with cancer stem cells have a significantly poorer prognosis than patients with lower levels of the genes, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The finding is among the first to show that the cancer stem cell hypothesis - which posits that some cancers spring from and are replenished by a small, hardy population of self-renewing cells - can be used to predict outcomes in a large group of patients and one day to tailor treatments in the clinic.
"The clinical implications of this concept are huge," said acting assistant professor of oncology Ash Alizadeh, MD. "If we're not able to design therapies to target this self-renewing population of chemotherapy-resistant cells, the patients will continue to have a tendency to relapse." And yet, although much laboratory evidence exists to support the idea, clinical evidence to support the cancer stem cell hypothesis has until now been sparse."
Read More: http://www.scimag.com/news-new-evidence-of-stem-cells-pivotal-role-in-ca...
