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The cancer has come back after a period in which it could not be detected. 'Recurrence' is the usual word for solid tumours and 'relapse' for blood cancers; they mean the same thing.
Recurrence can be local (at the original site), regional (in nearby lymph nodes) or distant (metastatic), and the interval before it is informative: early recurrence suggests aggressive, resistant disease, while late recurrence in breast cancer or melanoma reflects cells that lay dormant for years. It happens because microscopic disease survived the original treatment; adjuvant therapy exists to reduce this risk, and ctDNA tests after surgery can now detect the residual disease months before a scan would. Recurrent disease is treated according to where and when it returns, ranging from a second attempt at cure for an isolated local recurrence to systemic therapy for metastatic recurrence.
This paper connected the cancer stem cell idea to a clinical problem, the near-universal recurrence of glioblastoma after radiotherapy, and gave a mechanism and a drug target. It is part of the rationale for combining radiotherapy with DNA damage response inhibitors now in trials.
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.
The paper launched two decades of work on tumour-initiating cells in solid cancers, on why relapse follows apparently complete responses, and on measuring residual disease at the level of the cells that can regrow it. It also connected developmental biology pathways to cancer drug discovery.
Shares Disseminated tumour cells (DTCs), Anxiety around scans, and what the evidence says about how often to scan, What is not a second cancer: recurrence, metastasis and field cancerisation, Fear that the cancer will come back: how common it is, and when it stops being ordinary worry.
Shares Bao 2006: glioma stem cells resist radiotherapy by activating the DNA damage response, Reya 2001: stem cells, cancer and cancer stem cells, Al-Hajj 2003: prospective identification of tumorigenic breast cancer cells, Tumour dormancy.
Shares Anxiety around scans, and what the evidence says about how often to scan, Treating fear of recurrence: the randomised trials, their effect sizes, and where the treatment is available, Fear that the cancer will come back: how common it is, and when it stops being ordinary worry.
Shares Bao 2006: glioma stem cells resist radiotherapy by activating the DNA damage response, Reya 2001: stem cells, cancer and cancer stem cells.
Shares Remission, Progression.
Shares Treating fear of recurrence: the randomised trials, their effect sizes, and where the treatment is available, Fear that the cancer will come back: how common it is, and when it stops being ordinary worry.
Shares Disseminated tumour cells (DTCs), Tumour dormancy, Minimal / molecular residual disease (MRD).