© 2004 by Oxford University Press
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© 2004 Oxford University Press
NEWS |
The Root of Tumor Growth: Stem Cell Research Thrives
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Scientists have known for decades that it takes hundreds of thousands of cancer cells injected into an animal model to induce a tumor. For years, many researchers explained this observation as either a limitation of the assay’s ability to support tumor growth or the overall inefficiency of tumor formation.
What that data really suggest is that only a small proportion of cancer cells may actually have the capacity to form a tumor and that one must inject a large number of cells to ensure that some of those with regenerative properties will be present, said John Dick, Ph.D., from the Toronto General Research Institute in Canada, who has led the effort to identify and characterize these so-called cancer stem cells in leukemia. "There are decades of work pointing in this direction, but people just haven’t been talking about it in terms of cancer stem cells."
Although it is too early
Defining Stem Cells
Implications for Treatment
Bmi-1 and Epigenetic Controls
Genetic Influences