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The first demonstration in a solid tumour that only a small, marker-defined fraction of breast cancer cells can regrow the cancer: a few hundred cells with one surface profile formed tumours in mice while tens of thousands of the other cells did not.
Al-Hajj, Wicha, Clarke and colleagues separated cells from human breast cancers, mostly metastatic fluid collections and one primary tumour, by surface markers and injected them into immunodeficient mice. Cells that were CD44-positive and CD24-negative or low, and lacked lineage markers, formed tumours from as few as 100 cells in eight of nine patients' samples, whereas tens of thousands of cells with other profiles did not. The resulting tumours reproduced the mixture of cell types of the original cancer and could be passaged serially, the defining behaviour of a cancer stem cell.
This paper extended the cancer stem cell concept from leukaemia to a common solid tumour and started the search for tumour-initiating cells across cancers. It underpins research on why cancers relapse after treatments that shrink them and on therapies aimed at the cells that regrow disease.
Shares Reya 2001: stem cells, cancer and cancer stem cells, Stem cell, Recurrence and relapse.
Shares Reya 2001: stem cells, cancer and cancer stem cells, Stem cell, Cancer stem cell theory and phenotypic plasticity.
Shares Reya 2001: stem cells, cancer and cancer stem cells, Cancer stem cell theory and phenotypic plasticity.
Shares University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center, Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), HR-positive / HER2-negative breast cancer.
Shares Stem cell, Recurrence and relapse, HR-positive / HER2-negative breast cancer.
Shares Recurrence and relapse, HR-positive / HER2-negative breast cancer.
Shares Max S. Wicha, Mani 2008: the epithelial-mesenchymal transition generates cells with properties of stem cells, Cancer stem cell theory and phenotypic plasticity, Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).
Shares Recurrence and relapse, HR-positive / HER2-negative breast cancer.