How will understanding the characteristics of breast cancer stem cells move us closer to individualized therapy?

A. We know that breast cancers are made up of a mixture of different cancer cells. One of the types are cancer stem cells, which can regrow a cancer because of its ability to "self-renew".

However, we don't know if it is the cancer stem cell that travels to other sites in the body, so we are studying cancer stem cells in conjunction with our studies to characterize circulating tumor cells (cells that are shed by a tumor and travel in the blood stream). We are trying to determine if there are different types of cancer stem cells, and whether these cells have the ability to enter the blood stream and travel to other areas of the body to form metastases. The theory is that a therapy would need to treat the cancer stem cell, not just the daughters of the stem cell, or else tumors would shrink but not be completely eradicated.

Think of it like a weed--you might pull out the part above the ground, but if you don't get to the root, the weed will grow back. €¢ Q. Are you finding any genetic ... more.

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