Being diagnosed with brain cancer comes with a sobering sentence: even with the most aggressive treatments, life expectancy for the most common form of brain cancer—called glioblastoma—is less than two years. One of the key culprits, many scientists now believe, are cancer stem cells. Cancer stem cells are a subset of cancer cells that have … Continue reading The Man Behind the Curtain: Protein Helps Keep Cancer Cells Alive and Kicking
Cancer
Out with the Old and in with the New: Starvation Sparks Stem Cells to Replenish Immune System
New research from California scientists has revealed a startling side effect to prolonged starvation, or fasting. In the latest issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell, scientists from the University of Southern California describe how fasting triggers the human immune system to flush out old, damaged cells and replace them with new ones. This marks … Continue reading Out with the Old and in with the New: Starvation Sparks Stem Cells to Replenish Immune System
CIRM-Funded Scientists Identify Cause; Potential Therapy for Deadly Form of Eye Cancer
If the cancer is caught early, you may just lose your eye. If it is caught too late, however, you may lose your life. uch is the fate of those diagnosed with uveal melanoma, a rare but deadly form of eye cancer that attacks the eye’s pigment cells in the iris. Each year about 2,000 … Continue reading CIRM-Funded Scientists Identify Cause; Potential Therapy for Deadly Form of Eye Cancer
Getting at the Root of Cancer: Cancer Stem Cells Tracked down in Human Patients
The backers of the cancer stem cell hypothesis just got a boost from scientists at the University of Oxford, UK, and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who last week used an advanced genetic tracking technique that identified, in patients, the presence of cancer stem cells—a small subset of cancer cells that many experts view as … Continue reading Getting at the Root of Cancer: Cancer Stem Cells Tracked down in Human Patients
Perfecting the use of stem cells as drug delivery mules shows promise in brain tumors
Stem cells loaded with cancer-killing herpes virus (red) attacking a brain tumor cell (green). Courtesy HSCIThe innate tendency of stem cells to seek out inflammation—combined with the fact that our bodies see tumors as inflammation—has led many teams to try to harness stem cells as delivery vehicles for cancer therapies. CIRM funds a team at … Continue reading Perfecting the use of stem cells as drug delivery mules shows promise in brain tumors
Immune System “Double Agent” Fuels Colon Cancer Stem Cells, New Study Finds
Researchers have discovered that a type of cell normally tasked with defending the body against foreign invaders actually spurs the development of colon cancer stem cells. This discovery, published in the journal Immunity, offers new insight into why some forms of cancer come back again and again—even in the face of aggressive treatment. Led by … Continue reading Immune System “Double Agent” Fuels Colon Cancer Stem Cells, New Study Finds
Aggressive breast cancer treated with bone marrow stem cells
Last week brought a paper by Stanford researchers that has been a long, long time coming. It shows that 12-14 years after the experimental treatment, women with metastatic breast cancer benefited from high dose chemotherapy followed by transplantation of their own blood-forming stem cells. The paper was published online July 15 in Biology of Blood … Continue reading Aggressive breast cancer treated with bone marrow stem cells
Eradicate cancer stem cells, eradicate drug-resistant leukema
Markus Müschen/UCSFCIRM grantees at the University of California San Francisco have found the protein certain leukemia cells use to evade chemotherapy. A press release from UCSF says:Doctors who treat children with the most common form of childhood cancer – acute lymphoblastic leukemia – are often baffled at how bulk cancer cells die from chemotherapy whereas … Continue reading Eradicate cancer stem cells, eradicate drug-resistant leukema
Celebrating National Cancer Research Month with a cancer stem cell round-up
In celebration of National Cancer Research Month, our colleagues at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute have posted a series of blog entries about cancer research at their institute. The latest installment includes CIRM grantee Robert Wechsler-Reya, who moved to California from Duke University on a CIRM Research Leadership Award.According to their blog:Dr. Robert Wechsler-Reya, who directs … Continue reading Celebrating National Cancer Research Month with a cancer stem cell round-up
Shifting the balance of stem cell renewal and cancer
There's an interesting story from CIRM grantees at Sanford-Burnham this week, showing a relationship between tissue-specific stem cells in the body and cancer. It all started with an observation in people with Down Syndrome: they are less likely than other people to develop cancers. This observation eventually led to the discovery that a gene called … Continue reading Shifting the balance of stem cell renewal and cancer
The Stem Cellar 