About Nature's webspecial on cancer stem cells
David Basanta
Tuesday, 09 December 2008 04:30 UTC
Has any one had the time to read Nature’s webfocus on Cancer Stem Cells?
My first impression is that the subject remains unclear with some articles showing that cancer stem cells might not be necessary at all to initiate cancer whereas others find cancer stem cells to be more prevalent than previously thought. Furthermore, not sure whether even having an agreement on what is a cancer stem cell has been achieved.
Any thoughts on that?
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Replies
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I haven’t read these, but my take is the following. “stem cell” is a convenient concept but one that breaks down when really pushed on, whether we are talking about cancer cells or normal cells. Work in regenerative medicine has shown how most cells can be brought back to a stem state under the right conditions.
I would argue that there is a similar false dichotomy between cancer cells and normal cells. Whether a cell is cancerous or not can only be decided by its behavior in vivo, in context.
Thus, it’s probably not very fruitful to be looking for or researching cancer stem cells. Better to be looking at models that involve cell behavior (like the ecological models) rather than purely structural ones like stem cells.
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I went to a workshop this summer in Toronto where one of the speakers/atendees was Richard Hill, which I believe is one of the pioneers in the field. If you follow his definition of stem cell (which he also uses in his papers) a stem cell is capable of differentiating into any of the cancer phenotypes you might find in the tumour.
What I like of this definition is what I think will also prove to be the downfall of the cancer stem cell hypothesis. It is falsiable and testable (not saying it would be easy though) and I think we will find that many tumour cells will not be just differentiated versions of the initial cancer stem cell as those tumour cells will be the result of adaptation to different microenvironmental circumstances as a result of cancer somatic evolution.
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