Cancer Stem Cells And Melanoma

In recent years, many researchers have found that some cancers, including breast, bowel and prostate, have a small sub-population of 'stem-like' cells that drives the formation of the rest of the tumour. The evidence for this was the observation that only a tiny proportion of cells taken from a given tumour could spark the development of new cancers when transplanted into mice.

Sean Morrison and colleagues transplanted cells from 12 melanoma patients into mice, and found that around one-quarter of melanoma cells were able to trigger new cancers. The finding suggests that a wide variety of cell types within a melanoma is able to fuel the cancer's growth, and could have implications for therapies that target only cancer stem cells.

CONTACT

Sean Morrison (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA)
E-mail: seanjm@umich.edu

Connie Eaves (British Columbia Cancer Research Centre, Vancouver, Canada) N&V author
E-mail: ceaves@bccrc.ca

Message posted by: Trevor M. D'Souza