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Stem Cells At The Core of Cancer?
davecb writes "The Globe and Mail reports that cancers have at their core a small number of stem cells, without which they cannot spread or reoccur.
From the article: 'A spate of new discoveries about the basic biology of cancer is pushing researchers toward an astonishing conclusion: For decades, efforts to cure the disease may have targeted the wrong cells.' If true, the discoveries of Canadian and Italian research groups may give us a new
path to selectively attack cancer."
Cancer cells typically mutate in such a way that they reproduce uncontrollably. Often, this coincides with the original cancer cell "de-differentiating" (integrating? :) ) into a sort of stem cell, which allows them to reproduce infinitely.
So yes, it would be understandable that a stem cell would have stem cells at its core.
IANAB (I am not a biologist), but this sounds like redundant information to me, at least to some extent. What took them so long to figure this out? And, aren't all tumor cells pretty much the same (you know, that whole infinite replication thing)?
One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
Anyone answering above this post have not have time to read the article, here's the summary: The article is about research into whether or not cancerous stemcells are necessary for cancer growth. It discusses (biased) that they are, and talks briefly about where in the body you'll find stem cells and what they do. then finishes of with presenting a (in my non-medical view) convincing animal study, showing that when cancer cells are injected into mice, it was predominantly the mice who were injected with cancerous stem cells which showed cancer growth, while only one mouse (in 47) injected with cancerous non-stem cells showed a growing cancer.
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
There's a huge flaw in the article. You don't kill the king in chess, you capture him.
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over the years gazillions of money (well deserved money) was spent on cancer research - I cannot understand how they come up with a totally new direction only now! what have they been doing all this time? however - this is very exciting news and I pray this new path will help find a cure
Locksmith
The cause of, and solution to all of lifes problems.
The President was right the whole time! These evil stem cell things really are evil!
AC: Only on slashdot... could the sentence "My hovercraft is full of eels." be moderated "+4, Insightful
One of the problems with the older strains of stem cells in US research is that they often caused cancer in experimental mice. Going from undifferentiated to rapidly differentiating. When you think about those results this finding makes intuitive sense but I am also not a biologist, at least not full time.
The Globe and Mail reports that cancers have at their core a small number of stem cells, without which they cannot spread or reoccur.
So how long until we have some partisan halfwit wielding this nugget of information in his crusade against stem-cell research?
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Since stem cells come from embryos, and stem cells also cause cancer, the solution is obvious.
We must eradicate all embryos.
(We should probably eradicate all babies while we're at it, just to be safe.)
Stem Cells: The Real Culprits in Cancer?
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I remember that Dr. G. Edward Griffin, the author of "World Without Cancer : The Story of Vitamin B17", has been claiming for a long time that stem cells are at the core of cancer, and that vitamine B17 is very effective in helping the body stop stem cells from going wild and causing cancer. I have followed the debate around vitamine B17, but so far have not come to a conclusion whether it is real or a hoax.
Core of Cancer?
Easy answer.
Research me closer,
Tiny dancer.
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
here
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Actually, it was the other way around...
"Bring out the gimp"
It's good for the circuluation. ;)
Cancer cells are alive, too, you insensitive clod!
What kind of a society are we, if we murder cancer cells, just because they're "inconvenient" or "unwanted." Cancer is just God's way of saying that he wants more of you around to love!
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Often, this coincides with the original cancer cell "de-differentiating" (integrating? :) ) into a sort of stem cell, which allows them to reproduce infinitely.
;)
For NBAB (not being a biologist) that sentence seems to have a lot of conviction. Where'd you learn it?
Perhaps this is the necessary duplicated research for this to start becoming a scientific consesus.
BTW, that integrating thing was cute, but would have been more technically correct if you had used "antidifferentiating" instead.
OT: Why was the parent modded overrated? Is someone trying to push the metamoderation system by going through and downmodding people's posts with abandon? Lately I've been spending all my mod points trying to fix abuses!
:(){
There are various degrees of "de-differentiation" (which means that the cancer cell loses the properties of the cells that make up the tissue it originally came from, like receptors). The worst case is turning into something completely unrecognizable. The more similarity to the original the cancer cells retain, the better is the outlook for treatment, because the cancer cells might still respond to certain signals (for example hormones) that slow down its rate of division.
....is that is does now evolve like bacteria and viruses. Once we know how to cure all forms of cancer, it will never find ways to beat us. Eventually, we will beat it, and this article seems to relate to some very interesting research. I hope my kids will never know a world where cancer abounds.
Well, I disagree with the statement about the FDA, but that's an argument for another time. Other sources include: MHRA http://www.mhra.gov.uk/home/idcplg?IdcService=SS_G ET_PAGE&nodeId=433&within=Yes&keywords=laetrile/, Cancer Research UK: http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk/help/default.asp?page =21859/ and the USA National Cancer Research Institute http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/laetril e/Patient/page2/.
The wikipedia article linked previously also has a good summary.
Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm.
I think we should give credit where credit is due:
Note that we know in mice that blastomeres, put in the right environment, will multiply, organize and create trophoblastic cells (Many of the more promising lines of stem cells have been derived from blastocysts).
It is pretty uncanny that Beard nailed it pretty darn close in 1902, and he probably concluded that it was trophobastic cells because they couldn't get any deeper than that at the time.
transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
[Again, keep in mind that to isolate stem cells, scientists "peel away" the trophoblast.]
http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2004/1227/070.ht ml [forbes.com]
Cancer Killer
Radical researchers are onto a controversial idea for stopping cancer: go after stem cells
Peter Dirks uses a talented pair of hands to cut cancer out of the brains of sick children. But no matter how brilliantly he performs, he rarely is able to stop cancer's return; sometimes the tumors come roaring back just months after he excises all visible signs of disease.
This inevitability--of children dying in the face of his best attempts to heal them--got to him. "It broke my heart that we couldn't do more for them," says Dirks, a surgeon-scientist at the University of Toronto-affiliated Hospital for Sick Children. So in desperation he set out six years ago to pursue a radical new theory of what truly fuels cancer's growth, one that might unlock new therapies and explain why today's treatments often provide only fleeting help.
His concept was so fringy that government agencies repeatedly rejected his grant proposals. Parents of several of his patients kept the research going by donating $100,000 to his efforts; one of the couples even took up a collection at their child's funeral. But this fall Dirks reported a breakthrough that could dramatically alter our understanding of how cancer grows. His revelation, which could take a decade or more to take hold, is the latest in a string of findings that may one day uncloak the key triggers of many different kinds of cancer.
Scientists have long assumed that all of the dozens of kinds of cells inside a tumor are created equal--and are equally deadly, capable of spreading elsewhere in the body to create a totally new tumor. So they focus on chemotherapy that kills as many cancer cells as possible.
Dirks and a handful of other mavericks argue that this indiscriminate approach is wrongheaded. They believe a single type of cell may be cancer's main growth engine:mutant stem cells that, though barely present, spawn other cells that then spark growth. "This has profound implications," says researcher Thomas Look of Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. "The major cells you see under a microscope may not be the ones you need to kill in order to cure the disease." He adds that the theory "is definitely still very controversial" in some quarters.
Figure out a way to isolate these mutant cells and target only them, Dirks says, and maybe cancer can be stopped outright--and the kids he treats might stop dying so soon after he operates.
These mutant stem cells already have been found in breast cancer, two types of leukemia and multiple myeloma. This fall Dirks and six scientists at the University of Toronto proved the existence of the cells in human brain tumors, pinpointing a small group of cells believed to be the driver of the tumors' growth. "In every brain tumor we have looked at, in both adults and kids, we are able to find these cells," Dirks says.
When the researchers implanted just a couple hundred of these cells into mice, they developed huge tumors and often died within weeks. Other brain cancer cells, by contrast, were incapable of forming new tumors, no matter how many were injected into the mice, Dirks wrote last month in the journal Nature. The more stem cells present, the more virulently the tumor grows:They account for 1 in 4 cells in a glioblastoma tumor, the deadliest type of brain cancer, but only 1 in 500 cells in slower-growing forms of brain cancer, Dirks found.
Some researchers predict that stem cells eventually will be found in most major types of cancer. "It will completely change the search for new treatments and the way we think about the disease," says Irving Weissman, a renowned stem cell expert at Stanford University, who says several big drug firms have taken an interest in the latest findings.
Stem cells are the primitive
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
And what was Beard's Trophoblastic Thesis Of Cancer?
This lead some to say that cancer, rather than being an invasion of mutated cells, was more correctly an "over-healing" situation in the body (admittedly, that is an oversimplification). But there are many that think this is one reason why cancer so easily evades the immune system, which would under normal conditions kill off anything foreign to the body fairly quickly...
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
This connection between stem cells and cancer is touched upon in the TED talk with Eva Vertes, a young researcher. Very interesting stuff.
The video is available at the TEDTalks webpage. Look for Eva Vertes.
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/
"If we devise a drug that kills a neural stem cell," said Dr. Dirks, "maybe that will mean you won't be able to form new memories. . . . It will inhibit stem cells and they are thought to have a role in memory formation."
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
If true, the discoveries of Canadian and Italian research groups may give us a new path to selectively attack cancer.
Wow an important discovery without the benefits of capitalism.
Stem cells are evil! This will pave the way to a constitutional amendment to ban stem cells!
What, this wasn't obvious? Entire rows of teeth have shown up inside of tumors and nobody thought to say, "Gee, maybe there are some rogue stem cells at work here." What blindingly obvious connection will they fail to see next? The possibility that stem cells may turn out not to be useful because when properly stimulated to grow a replacement body part, they behave precisely like cancer?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Sorry, I just giggle when I see "Dr. Dick" in an article.
Teeth have been known to form inside an "ovarian dermoid cyst". This is cancer that comes from the cells that form eggs in women. The tumors they cause can have hair, teeth, etc. Pretty creepy but not actually a sign that all cancers have stem cells.
Well, obviously we have to find a way to hunt down these killer terrorist stem cells... So where is my Federal grant?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I for one welcome our new stem cell overlords.
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
This topic is nothing new. University of Michigan, Stanford. Human Breast Cancer Prospective identification of tumorigenic breast cancer cells. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2003 Apr 1;100(7):3983-8. Epub 2003 Mar 10. Erratum in: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2003 May 27;100(11):6890 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/100/7/3983 Therapeutic implications of cancer stem cells. Curr Opin Genet Dev. 2004 Feb;14(1):43-7. Review
aside from the obvious implications of this discovery (which I think are very interesting) - does this mean we can harvest stem cells from the cancer cells for use in stem cell research? are these stem cells different from the ones that we have been arguing over for the last few years that we've been trying to steal from embryos? i sure hope we can find a way to get some stem cell research done, otherwise we will surely fall behind the other countries that are moving forward in this area of science. f bush he's holdin us down!
"i stand on the edge of destruction" -shai hulud
See, we TOLD you that stem cells were bad! Stem cell research kills babies and now we find out that stem cells cause cancer!!!! What more do you need? It's time to ban all stem cells now.
- W
Stem Cell research has been fatally flawed by politics. This is not at all new information. Embryonic Stem Cells are not the only type of stem cells, and are probably the worst for cancer, as they will grow indefinitely (therefore often leading to cancer...). Stem cells from Adults on the other hand do not divide indefinitely and are much less likely to cause cancer. In fact other than the fact that they divide indefinetely, embryonic stem cells have proven to be quite useless. Our famous Christopher Reeve, for example, was aided NOT by embryonic stem cells, but by adult stem cells, and this is the case for countless other examples. Use of adult stem cells has led to regrowth of a skull in a girl that was in a car accident. Use of embryonic stem cells on the other hand, leads to unending growth, which often leads to cancer, as this article points out. All of this information I knew up to 3 years ago, after a good friend of mine who is a professor/researcher on stem cells in San Fransisco lectured me for about an hour after i exposed my *ignorance* of the subject. This is not new information, its just been kept in the dark by politicians who want another cause to wage against each other.
This is not news, this is not new, and there is a great deal of controversy over how important it is. Nothing to see here, move along.
There was a Scientific American a few months ago with a good write up on stem cells' role in cancer. I recommend a visit to the library if you're interested in the topic.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The right does not associate Stem Cells with abortion. (they are usually better educated than that on the issue)
/.
It is often reported that way to muddy the issue. The "right" is VERY clear that it is embryonic stem's that are the issue.
The only thing that Bush did (and like many other conservatives, I do not support his Facist government, or the one before it) was withdraw funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Like that other poster earlier, I am also posting anon. The herd mentality that mods down anyone who disagrees with embryonic stem cell research seems to be the norm on
Detractors... Do some research. Most of the stem cell advances had happened with non-embryonic stem cells before the funding ban. Can they not multiply the embryonic stem cells they have now without harvesting more?
For the record I am a biologist and specifically a cancer geneticist and while I only graduated recently this is something that I can't recall ever having discussed. Not even in a course devoted to the biology of cancer cells.
At the same time it makes almost perfect sense as a potentially important paradigm shift in how we think about cancer and, from the perspective of this article, how we treat cancers.
Essentially the way cancers were currently thought to function is that normal, differentiated cells sometimes just go bad. A skin cell, for example, becomes mutated over time, perhaps by exposure to radiation (e.g. UV radiation from the sun) and the cumulative effect of those mutations causes it to spiral out of control. First the cell becomes able to divide again, something that differentiated cells don't typically do. Second the cell loses the proper controls over when and how it should replicate. Finally the cell becomes resistant to the typical means by which aberrant cells are destroyed naturally by the body. That's what cancer is in a nutshell, a cell that shouldn't be growing, growing out of control with no regard to the needs of other cells, and with a resistance to the body's normal methods of stopping it.
This theory states that instead of a normal, differentiated skin cell like the mainstream has typically assumed is responsible it is instead a stem cell: one of the undifferentiated cells that is naturally capable of unlimited replication. While the layman can see that this takes out one of the three necessary steps for a cell to become cancerous (thus reducing the total number of mutations needed) the greater issue (at least as posed in this article) is that if these cells are the root cause of cancer we have been investing too heavily in the wrong kinds of treatment. Instead of going for large-scale destruction of the entire tumor mass (an important consideration regardless) we need to be focusing on destroying the ringleader stem cells that produce sub-cells that produce the tumor mass.
If you think of it like an RTS game the stem cells are the factory producing the tanks. Sure if you destroy all of the tanks it'll make the problem go away for a while (remission), but if you don't hunt down and destroy what's causing the tanks to be produced you're just going to have to deal with another rush (relapse) of tanks in the future.
This theory hypothesizes that this is the reason why it will often appear that the totality of the cancer is gone, but a relapse will happen in the future. It's because the cancerous stem cell was not destroyed.
Robert Becker discovered back in the 60's and 70's (and published his results in 1985 in his book "The Body Electric") that the salamander body uses electrical signaling to direct regeneration. He rightly wondered if this would be true of humans and found plenty of evidence for it through some really interesting experiments. In the process, he found reason to suspect that a link exists between undifferentiated stem cells and cancer. Furthermore, and importantly, he found that the same electromagnetic currents and fields that are used to direct stem cells can also promote the growth of cancer. So, contrary to assertions that EMF's *cause* cancer, they actually promote its growth once it exists. What this means is that if you find that you have cancer, you need to get the hell out of the city and get to a rural treatment facility ASAP.
It's a sad fact that Becker was completely ignored by his peers when he was publishing his papers. He was way ahead of his time. There's good reason to believe that all of the Iraq War vets would be regenerating their limbs right now had people paid him the attention he deserved.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
Isn't that convinient. Maybe we would have found this out years ago if someone would have funded stem cell research.
First of all, I am coming from a medical background, and I also have friends who are graduate students of several of the scientists cited in the article.
So, basically, here's what's going on. Clinically detectable tumors consist of heterogeneous population of cells which originate from a clonal growth of the progeny of a single cell (e.g., the monoclonal origin of neoplasms, Knudson two-hit hypothesis, etc.). Tumor stem cells (called Tumor Initiating Cells, T-ICs) not only have the capacity to initiate, but, ultimately sustain tumor growth. These cells, however, only constitute only about 0.1-2% of the total population of cells and like their normal counterparts, and have a very low rate of replication. Now do we see what the problem is?
A lot of our current drugs and therapies target the fast growing progeny of the T-ICs which constitute over 98% of the cells in the cancer, leaving the slow growing T-ICs alone! Consequently, that means that some tumors can easily recur after treatment. In other words, our drugs may have been targeting the wrong cells this entire time!
Hurray! No more need for sunblock.
The problem of the "cancer cells were stem cells in the first place" hypothesis is that it contradicts several facts :
1. Difference between stages in cancer when observed in the microscope.
Earliest signs are that you see more cells dividing than usually expected for a given volume.
Early stages of cancer show normal cells, but in more quantity than expected.
Latter stages also show normal cells, but the overall structures between cells is lost.
Then you have cells that exhibit stranges features.
The more advanced the stage is, the less the cells are looking like what cells with that function are supposed to look like.
In the latest stage, the cancereous tissue looks like a goo full with debris and some small blobs that look like dividing cells, but look very wrong.
This stratification has clinical signification : Outcome of cancer clearly vary depending on the stage. Some cancers only exhibits some earlier stage and have better outcome.
This progression speaks strongly in favor of cell that progressively lose their differenciation as un-checked mutation accumulates
2. Experimental mutation of cells.
Differenciated cells, like white blood cells that produce an interesting anti-body, can be rendered cancerous in controlled way (staying at the "dividing a lot" stage) and still stay differenciated : they only produce antibodies (as expected from a white cell) and nothing else (as expected from a stem cell supposed to be able to differenciate into anything)
3. Aspect of the cancer
Stem cells are supposed to be able to differenciate in a lot of different structures.
Initial stages in a cancer (before everthing turns into a goo), on the other hand, initially looks exactly as what the dividing cell was supposed to produce (in earliest stage of stomach and gut cancer, you see a anormally high number of... the usual stomach or gut cells), and after mutation accumulate, it looks only like similar population of cells (some barrier of the differenciations are lost) (stomach cancer may exhibit gut cells and vice-versa. Called "Metaplasy")
4. Stem-cells cancer
Stem cells are supposed to be able to differenciate in a lot of different structures, and there is a special category of cancers, called Sarcomas, that are believed to be caused by either stem cells or not much differenciated cells, and that exhibits, at early stages, very curious structures : perfectly normal tissue that is found at the wrong place. For the most extreme exemple : such a cancer in the bone may produce hairs or tooths.
The "stem-cell in the first place" hypothesis would predict this to happen often, when actuall this weird kind of cancer are onl observed in region where less differenciated cells can be found.
All this 4 findings tend to invalidate this hypothesis. To be considered valid, scientist must find an explanation wh this finding can be found in a "stem-cells first" cancer.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I also remember a discussion of cancer from someone at the U in biological sciences, the emphasis is that cancer cells are far from normal, not only mutated but rapidly mutating.
IANAB as well but I've known several stem cell researchers for years now and never heard of "de-differentiating;" I believe you're making that up to understand the infinite division of cancer cells. Any cell can divide infinitely - not just stem cells. Stem cells are unique for a different reason: they can differentiate into any of the category of cell they belong to (embryonic can become truly any cell).
Typically biologists, upon discovering a cell they're interested in, "make it immortal" by what is sometimes also called "giving it cancer." They remove the controls that cause the cell to die on its own (programmed cell death) and divide gradually. This simplifies experimentation as a single capture may yield numerous experiments.
You can't blame researchers for seeing this standard lab practice and extending it to their understanding of cancer. Perhaps this worldwide method has blinded researchers until now to a very important segment of the real cancer lifecycle.
If this theory proves true, this is a very major discovery, that suits the unpredictability and brutal nature of existing cancer treatments and could finally lead to highly targeted cures given the very small number of unique roots.
[And for those that study enzymems, they will find that a poor diet causes the body's enzymes to get real stressed out. Digestion is hard on the body, which is why calorie restriction improves lifespan. But when a steady diet of junk food is eaten, the body works so hard trying to digest it, important enzymes that help repair the body decrease. -- Transporter_ii]
From the Lancet:
"In many [western] countries, peoples' diet changed substantially in the second half of the twentieth century, generally with increases in consumption of meat, dairy products, vegetable oils, fruit juice, and alcoholic beverages, and decreases in consumption of starchy staple foods such as bread, potatoes, rice, and maize flour. Other aspects of lifestyle also changed, notably, large reductions in physical activity and large increases in the prevalence of obesity."[18]
"It was noted in the 1970s that people in many western countries had diets high in animal products, fat, and sugar, and high rates of cancers of the colorectum, breast, prostate, endometrium, and lung; by contrast, individuals in developing countries usually had diets that were based on one or two starchy staple foods, with low intakes of animal products, fat, and sugar, and low rates of these cancers."[18]
"These observations suggest that the diets [or lifestyle] of different populations might partly determine their rates of cancer, and the basis for this hypothesis was strengthened by results of studies showing that people who migrate from one country to another generally acquire the cancer rates of the new host country, suggesting that environmental [or lifestyle factors] rather than genetic factors are the key determinants of the international variation in cancer rates."[18]
See also:
Scientists estimate that most cancers are associated with factors related to how we live, called lifestyle factors [note: these things effect enzymes -- Transporter_ii]. Evidence reviewed by the American Cancer Society suggests that about one-third of the 550,000 cancer deaths that occur in the United States each year is due to dietary factors (for example, excess calories, high fat, and low fibre). Another third is due to cigarette smoking. Other lifestyle factors which increase the risk for cancer include drinking heavily, lack of regular physical exercise, promiscuous sexual behavior,
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality