Stem cells, popularly known as a source of biological rejuvenation, may play harmful roles in the body, specifically in the growth and spread of cancer. Amongst the wildly dividing cells of a tumor, scientists have located cancer stem cells. Physician-scientists are studying these cells with hopes of combating malignant cancers in the brain.
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Cancer Stem Cells May Be At The Root Of Brain Tumors
Stem cells have the infinite ability to renew themselves and produce the many different cell types that make up a human. Cancer's hallmark is its ability to grow infinitely, multiplying into various cells that make up a tumor. Is cancer the result of a normal stem cell turned bad or an ordinary cell that somehow acquires a stem cell's immortality and versatility?
Some patients' brain tumors respond to chemotherapy and some do not. A pathway/mechanim - cancer stem cells - may be the cause. To prevent cancer's return may require one therapy to shrink a tumor and another therapy to kill the abnormal seeds that sprouted it. Conventional cancer therapies have been good at shrinking tumors, but the ability to shrink tumors has little or no correlation to survival times. Newer treatments need to decrease the number of cancer stem cells.
There is a communication between stem cells and a tumor. It sends out a signal that make the different cells of the tumor and the cancer cells then (send chemical messages) that cycle back to the cancer stem cell. Every tissue and organ in the body is made of cells. In order for cells to grow, divide, or die, they send and receive chemical messages. These messages are transmitted along specific pathways that involve various genes and proteins in a cell.
A protein that governs development of human embryonic stem cells can inhibit the growth and spread (metastasis) of cancer. Embryonic stem cells can become any of 200-plus cell types in the adult body, depending on the signals they receive from their 'microenvironment' (surrounding cells, tissues and vasculature). During cancer progression, malignant cells also receive and release signals from their 'microenvironment,' cues that promote tumor growth and metastasis.
Finding the protein that prevents cancer from metastasizing, isolating factors within the human embryonic stem cell 'microenvironment,' can influence tumor cell fate and reverse the cancerous properties of metastatic tumor cells. However, it is not the only tumor suppressive factor within the embryonic 'microenvironment.' Not all genes and proteins have a critical role in the survival and growth of cancer cells.
In some cases, targeted drugs may kill tumor cells without killing microvascular cells in the same time frame. In other cases, they may kill microvascular cells without killing tumor cells. Yet in other cases, they could kill both types of cells or neither type of cells. The ability to these targeted agents to kill tumor and/or microvascular cells in the same tumor is highly variable among the different agents.
You still need to measure the net result of all cellular processes, including interactions, occurring in real time when cancer cells actually are exposed to specific cancer drugs, not just the individual molecular targets. Improving cancer patient diagnosis and treatment through a combination of cellular and gene-based testing will offer predictive insight into the nature of an individual's particular cancer and enable oncologists to prescribe treatment more in keeping with the heterogeneity of the disease.