In Order to Evade Chemotherapy, Cancer Cells Mimic Stem Cells

Research from Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, gives good insight into why some cancers grow when the drugs they are getting should be making them shrink. The research showed that while anti cancer medications are very often effective at shrinking the size of cancer tumors, there are some that might have the exact opposite effect by expanding the small amount of cancer stem cells that are believed to drive the disease.

The researchers believe that this indicates some of the treatments might actually be producing more cancer stem cells than are capable of spreading due to the fact that the cells are trying to discover how to survive the therapy.

This may be the explanation for the reason that the expression of stem cell markers has been linked with the occurrences of resistance to treatments and the resultant poor outcome for patients with cancers such as prostate, breast and lung cancers. The researchers feel that if they can get an understanding of how to target these markers as well as the cells could be a useful way to treat these cancers.

The cancer stem cell markers that they have identified include Nanog and BMI1. Both of these are known to contribute to stem cells' ability to renew themselves and differentiate into different cell types, These same molecules are also to be found in embryonic stem cells.

There has been a lot of debate recently among researchers over the idea that some of the therapies are just not able to eliminate cancer due to the fact that they do not target the cancer stem cells that are responsible for the development of the tumor.

The researchers set out to find the answer by measuring both stem cell markers and the volume of the tumor both before and after treatment. For this experiment, they used a mouse model.