Cancer Stem Cells – Basics, Progress and Future Potential

The primary characteristics of adult stem cells are maintaining prolonged quiescence, ability to self-renew and plasticity to differentiate into multiple cell types. These properties are evolutionarily conserved from fruit fly to humans. Similar to normal tissue repair in organs, the stem cell concept is inherently impregnated in the etiology of cancer. Tumors contain a minor population of tumor-initiating cells, called "cancer stem cells " that maintain some similarities in self-renewal and differentiation recognized as features of normal adult stem cells. Therefore, various methods developed originally for the analysis and characterization of adult stem cells ar