PMID: 18427384Apr 23, 2008Paper

Targeting of cancer stem/progenitor cells plus stem cell-based therapies: the ultimate hope for treating and curing aggressive and recurrent cancers.

Panminerva Medica
M Mimeault, S K Batra

Abstract

The rapid progression from aggressive primary cancers into locally advanced and invasive and/or metastatic diseases remains a big obstacle for an early diagnosis and curative therapeutic intervention for cancer patients. The late-stage leukemias and disseminated and metastatic sarcomas, melanomas, brain tumors and epithelial cancers are the devastating diseases associated with a high rate of recurrence after treatment with the conventional clinical therapies including surgery, ionizing radiation, hormonal therapy and systemic chemotherapy, which generally lead to the death of patients. Therefore, the establishment of the molecular events underlying cancer initiation and progression into locally invasive and metastatic diseases is of major interest in basic cancer research as well as for the development of new effective clinical therapeutic options against the recurrent and lethal cancers. Recent advances have led to the identification of specific oncogenic products that are implicated in the malignant transformation of adult stem/progenitor cells into leukemic or tumorigenic and migrating cancer stem/progenitor cells during cancer progression. Of therapeutic interest, the molecular targeting of deregulated signaling elements in...Continue Reading

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