Identifying cancerous stem cells - significant breakthrough?

[ack]

This is potentially huge http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/08/01/157706171/lab-findings-support-provocative-theory-on-cancer-enemy-within

And what a small world this is... one of the quoted physicians has treated a family member.

 

[docvale]

This is potentially huge http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/08/01/157706171/lab-findings-support-provocative-theory-on-cancer-enemy-within

And what a small world this is... one of the quoted physicians has treated a family member.

It is a breakthrough, despite this kind of discovery has been reported, within the various cancer types, for years now.
The use of the term "stem" is a little weird, and it has nothing to deal with the stem cells, embryonic or somatic (adult) that generate and re-generate our tissues.

A cancer stem cell is, by definition, is a cancerous cell that has the unique property, in an experimental setting, to transfer the tumor from the host mouse to a recipient. Differently from the normal stem cells, whose the product of differentiation into a normal tissue, the cancer stem cells "differentiate" (it's a kind of inappropriate, but it cannot be defined better) into highly proliferating tumor cells.

All in all, the cancer stem cells are the cells that are responsible for relapses after an apparently successful chemotherapy. Their rate of proliferation is very very low, so they're not sensitive to the anti-neoplastic agents, which, usually, target proliferating cells.
Accordingly, the study and profiling of cancer stem cells may provide targets for new drugs to be included in a chemotherapeutic regimen for a better tumor load clearance.

 

[ack]

Equally intriguing is this article
[h=1]Researchers Discover Gene that Permanently Stops Cancer Cell Proliferation[/h] http://www.newswise.com/articles/ca...rmanently-stops-case-western-reserve-universi

 

[docvale]

Equally intriguing is this article
[h=1]Researchers Discover Gene that Permanently Stops Cancer Cell Proliferation[/h] http://www.newswise.com/articles/ca...rmanently-stops-case-western-reserve-universi

I couldn't find the original paper, but the report is confusing.
In the first part, it states that a constitutively active mutant of Chk1 kills cancer cells, while, later in the text, the goal is pharmacological inhibition of Chk1

In any case, the statement that either activation or inhibition of Chk1 might be non toxic is speculative: no experiments have been conducted on mice, but just on a pure cancer cell population on petri dish.