I am currently in Toronto attending the annual conference organised by the Society of Mathematical Biology. One of the talks I attended yesterday was given by Heiko Enderling , a researcher at Tufts University School of Medicine. His talk on breast tumour growth makes the assumption that there is a niche of cancer cell with stem cell-like properties that are responsible for sustaining tumour progression. That is still a highly controversial hypothesis.
The cancer stem cell hypothesis (mentioned also in a previous post) assumes that a subset of the tumour population is either made of stem cells gone bad or differentiated cells that acquire stem-cell like properties like limitless replication. The therapeutic consequences of this hypothesis are important: removing most of a tumour is useless unless the surgery takes out the stem cells that will, otherwise, replenish the empty space again rather quickly.
Talking with Heiko after his talk the idea I have now is that the stem-cell hypothesis, at least from the theoretical point of view, is not incompatible with the more accepted idea, put forward by Hanahan and Weinberg and which also include the necessity of the tumour to contain cells capable of limitless replication. The main difference (in my opinion) could be that the cancer stem cell hypothesis stresses that the capability of limitless replication should be passed on to the daughter cells and that only a subset of the tumour population is likely to have the stem-like capabilities.
That’s an interesting attempt to bridge across Hanahan-Weinberg and the cancer stem cell hypothesis. I wish I were in Toronto talking with the two of you!
The first time I heard – extensively – about cancer stem cells was at a talk by Massague in New Jersey in 2006. That sounded a very clever idea and, based on his presentation, supported by some rather strong evidence.
Hi Massimo,
Those are exactly my thoughts. The SMB conference is a nice conference but maybe too theoretical for the taste of most biologists and thus there were not that many of them in the audience of this contributed talk. It is a pity that people like you (cancer biologists with a curiosity for mathematical/computational approaches) are not seen more often.
I am very curious about what you guys find to support (or not) the cancer stem cell hypothesis.
Hi David,
please save this cancer stem cells discussion for an extra couple of weeks! We can still talk in London at our upcoming Science Blogging event.