Glioblastomas in lab dishes and mouse brains are fakes, little Potemkin villages that everyone thought were faithful replicas of human glioblastomas but which,
lacking tumor stem cells, were nothing of the kind.
Not exact matches
They find that
tumors lacking Numb have increased numbers of cancer
stem cells, thus providing the
tumor with a higher potential to spread and grow.
In order to identify the cancer
stem cells from other cells in the
tumor, the research team studied epigenetic mechanisms that distinguish between the least - sorted cells, with endless division properties and a potential to create growth, and the more sorted cells which
lack this ability.
Rather, each
tumor contains a small subset of cells with
stem cell - like capacities that are responsible for initiating and sustaining
tumor growth, while the bulk of the
tumor cells
lacks this ability.
Nevertheless, the field is — also due to the
lack of standard conditions for important methods — currently struggling with many issues such as the challenge of developing a clear definition of what
tumor stem cells actually are and how they can be identified.