Max S. Wicha

TL;DR: The ability to prospectively identify tumorigenic cancer cells will facilitate the elucidation of pathways that regulate their growth and survival and strategies designed to target this population may lead to more effective therapies.

TL;DR: It is shown that normal and cancer human mammary epithelial cells with increased aldehyde dehydrogenase activity (ALDH) have stem/progenitor properties and these cells contain the subpopulation of normal breast epithelium with the broadest lineage differentiation potential and greatest growth capacity in a xenotransplant model.

TL;DR: This work identified a highly tumorigenic subpopulation of pancreatic cancer cells expressing the cell surface markers CD44, CD24, and epithelial-specific antigen (ESA) that showed the stem cell properties of self-renewal, the ability to produce differentiated progeny, and increased expression of the developmental signaling molecule sonic hedgehog.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that nonadherent mammospheres are enriched in early progenitor/stem cells and able to differentiate along all three mammary epithelial lineages and to clonally generate complex functional structures in reconstituted 3D culture systems.

TL;DR: The current development of cancer therapeutics based on tumor regression may have produced agents that kill differentiated tumor cells while sparing the rare cancer stem cell population, and the development of more effective cancer therapies may require targeting this important cell population.