Читать книгу The SAGE Encyclopedia of Stem Cell Research - Группа авторов - Страница 286

The design of new drugs for the treatment of cancer stem cells requires an understanding of the cellular mechanisms regulating cell proliferation. The first advances in this area were made with hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and their transformed counterparts in leukemia. It is now becoming increasingly clear that stem cells of many organs share the same cellular pathways. Leukemias have often been a window into larger truths about cancer in general. Chemotherapy, for instance, was shown to be effective in leukemia well before it was used on solid tumors. The scientific and medical clarity offered by leukemia is due in large part to the ability of researchers and physicians to easily take blood samples and identify the various cellular components of the blood cancers.

In leukemia, the bone marrow or blood becomes glutted with immature blood cells (in acute leukemias) or more mature blood cells (in chronic leukemias). In the 1990s, leukemia researchers isolated a different subpopulation of leukemia cells: cells not by themselves clogging bone marrow or blood vessels, but which could transfer a leukemia from a sick mouse into a previously healthy one. The implication was that these cells were the critical stem cells that actually caused the leukemia and gave rise to all the other immature or mature blood cells that clinicians saw in the samples under their microscopes. Since that time, researchers have found similar CSCs in most kinds of solid tumors, including breast, bladder, colon, and liver cancer.

Additionally, a normal stem cell may be transformed into a cancer stem cell through disregulation of the proliferation and differentiation pathways controlling it or by inducing oncoprotein activity.