Researchers Find Cancer Stem Cells Identification

Every day, researchers continue to make advances in the fight against breast cancer. In a recent press release, it was announced that researchers have discovered a way to identify stem cells that exist in breast tumors. Could this discovery be the beginning of developing a test that could help plot the most effective way to treat breast cancer on an individual basis?

Researchers at the University of Michigan's Comprehensive Cancer Center hope that this discovery is just the very beginning of this very type of process. Further, their studies indicate that a hypothesis that many have discounted in the past may well be true.

Some researchers have theorized that there are cancer stem cells that fuel the growth of breast cancer tumors. While many scientists have dismissed this hypothesis, this study seems to indicate that rather than dismissing this hypothesis, it may indeed, be correct.

This hypothesis is lent additional support because of the fact that researchers at the University of Michigan were the first team of scientists to discover the fact that stem cells could be found in a solid mass, in a tumor. Additionally, of all of the cells found in a tumor, cancer stem cells consisted of less than five percent of the total number of cells.

While this is an incredibly small amount, their research determined that the cancer stem cells, even though small in number, were mighty in power. The stem cells could be one of the key reasons that cancerous tumors grow.

Without getting overly technical, researchers discovered that certain cells did have the ability to act as stem cells. This is important because unlike other cells, stem cells are capable of cells that are identical to them, and can also produce cells that can transform into a myriad of other types of cells.

By examining the cells that they discovered, researchers noted that there were two primary types of cells. Cells that did not have the ability to generate tumors, and cells that did have the ability to generate tumors.

Researchers discovered that even a few hundred cells of a particular nature could produce a tumor. Their studies also lead to the ability to determine just how aggressive these cells would be and how much growth they would produce.

By contrast, even with the help of 50,000 cells, some cells were simply incapable of producing a tumor.

The name of the marker that researchers are using to identify these processes is the ALDH1 marker.

"The lessons we've learned from breast cancer stem cells have been very valuable to us as we attack the cancer stem cells in other organs. Our hope is that some of the treatments we develop for one type of tumor like breast cancer may also work in targeting the cancer stem cells in these other types of tumors, and so we actually may make great progress in treating a wide variety of cancers," said Max S. Wicha, M.D., Distinguished Professor of Oncology and Director of the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Currently this process is too complicated to be used with actual patients. This study has been published in the journal, Cell Stem Cell.

Source:
http://www.newswise.com/p/articles/view/535850/