New Findings in Breast Cancer
Results from Berkeley Lab and University of Copenhagen Collaboration Contradict Current Views on Cancer Stem Cells
New findings in breast cancer research by an international team of scientists contradict the prevailing belief that only basal-like cells with stem cell qualities can form invasive tumors. Research led by Ole William Petersen at the University of Copenhagen (CU) and Mina Bissell of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and has shown that luminal-like cells with no detectable stem cell qualities can generate larger tumors than their basal-like counterparts. This may hold important implications for the diagnosis and the treatment of breast cancer as well as future personalized cancer medicine.
“It is fashionable to think of breast cancer as a disease that can be treated if cancer stem cells are killed off, but we are reporting a sub-population of cancer cells that have no obvious stem cell properties and yet can be tumorigenic and highly aggressive,” Bissell says. “The existence of these additional sub-populations of tumorigenic cells tells us that the entire tumor needs to be eradicated, not just one sub-population of basal-like cells.” (more…)