John Dick: careful assays for cancer stem cells
http://www.nature.com/stemcells/2009...s.2009.47.html
A couple highlights:
How can understanding heterogeneity help with cancer therapies?
For years, the goal has been to achieve the highest tumour-kill frequency. The problem is some cells are more potent than other cells, and on top of that these cells have mechanisms that make them more resistant.
The whole idea of a cancer stem cell was raised to explain heterogeneity. If a tumour isn't heterogeneous in some function, the CSC model isn't wrong so much as irrelevant.
If you're saying that all cells can acquire these stem cell properties, that's really supporting the stochastic models — that's saying that depending on the external or internal environment, any cell could be a cancer stem cell. If there's randomness to it, you're left with the idea that every cell has equal potential, and that's a fundamentally different concept from the hierarchical model where it's more intrinsic to the stem cells