This challenging question serves as an excellent framework for introducing the concept of “Cancer stem cells” in this article. It broadly echoes some of the many crucial questions surrounding the havoc posed by cancer and efforts taken to the treatment and bettering survival outcomes. Years of research have delineated precise knowledge about the biology and etiology of cancer beginning with the earliest microscopic discoveries of altered cancer cells.
Cancer stem cells were first proposed in the early nineteenth century by Johannes Muller and Rudolf Virchow, who proposed that cancer originates from a population of cells similar to those in the embryonic stage. Later, in 1976, Peter Nowel gave a Darwinian underpinning for cancer development. Today, enough evidence has been lineated in favor of cancer developing from an abnormal stem cell that forms the basis for the “Notorious Beginnings” by acquiring mutations in their genetic make-up.
“This has called for the need for something more than just reducing the tumor burden for cancer cure because to achieve this, we must focus on killing the tumor-initiating cancer stem cells. Targeted and immune-based therapies hold a great promise in this regard…..A combined approach of government and private sectors is needed to undertake an extensive endeavor to identify and develop targeted therapies for this minor population of tumor cells in real-world clinical situations.”
Read more at the source: https://sujjawalahmad.medium.com/the-notorious-beginnings-why-have-most-cancers-remained-incurable-e138ec5dd681
About the Author:
Sujjawal Ahmad is currently working as a Research Associate, Cancer Stem Cells/Hematological Malignancies at AKU’s Centre for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research (AKU-CRM). Learn more about him here.
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