Cancer has acquired a new twist in its sordid journey. Tracing its beginnings, researchers have stumbled upon “Stem Cells” and their involvement in the development of cancer. It will not be an exaggeration to say that stem cells may hold clues for lasting remedy of the diseased tissues.
Researchers believe that beneath every tumor, there are abnormal stem cells that support malignant tissues. This is probably the reason why a tumor resurfaces after it has been obliterated by anti-cancer drugs. There could also lead to further research on anti-cancer drugs, that could be developed according to the severity of the anomaly of the diseased stem cells rather than indiscriminately kill cells and shrink tumors, which in all probability will recur."I think this is one of the most interesting developments in cancer research in the last five years," says Robert Weinberg, a cancer geneticist at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "I think more and more people are accepting it and evidence is accumulating that cancer stem cells exist in a variety of tumors."
Cancer cells and stem cells resemble each other in their properties, and this has been known for quite sometime. But this is a recent research that seems to study cancer from the roots , and link it to aberrant stem cells.
