Stem Cells Found in Pancreatic Tumors
February 14, 2007 by Gloria Gamat
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
Cancer stem cells are the small number of cancer cells that are able to replicate to promote tumor growth.
The failure of current cancer treatments, as believed by cancer researchers, is due to the fact that they don’t target or kill such stem cells.
Researchers from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center are the first to identify cancer stem cells in pancreatic tumors.
According to lead study author Diane Simeone, M.D., director of the Gastrointestinal Oncology Program at the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center:
“Over the last one to two decades we have not had a significant improvement in the long-term survival rates with pancreatic cancer. I believe that if we can target cancer stem cells within pancreatic cancer we may have an avenue to really make a breakthrough in therapy for this awful disease.”
Pancreatic cancer is the cancer with the worst survival rates, almost all patients with this type of cancer die.
Now that stem cells in pancreatic cancer have been identified, researchers can develop drugs that will kill these cells.
Study results appear in the Feb. 1 issue of Cancer Research.
Read more from the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center.
[In photo: Pancreatic tumor generated from cancer stem cells. Image courtesy of University of Michigan Health System]
