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Pancreatic Cancer Stem Cells Found

Posted on: Thursday, 1 February 2007, 18:00 CST

The discovery of tumor-producing stem cells in pancreatic cancer may result in new therapies for this highly fatal disease, say U.S. scientists.

Five-year survival rates for pancreatic cancer are just 3 percent, and only 10 percent to 15 percent of patients can benefit from surgery.

The research team was led by Diane Simeone and Max S. Wicha at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The scientists noted that stem cells had already been found in leukemia and cancers of the breast, brain, central nervous system, head and neck, and colon.

Current thought is that it is the stem cells in tumors that power their growth, and therapies must be designed to specifically eliminate them instead of killing cells indiscriminately, before a cancer can be cured.

Stem cells are going to radically change how we treat cancer, said Simeone.

Since all previous tumor stem cells expressed the surface marker CD44, the researchers looked for cells with that marker, as well as CD24 and ESA in the tumor samples of 10 patients with pancreatic cancer.

When they discovered cells with all three markers, they injected them into mice, along with tumor cells that did not express the markers. The marker cells produced more and larger tumors that grew more quickly, renewed themselves, and created both marker-positive and marker-negative offspring, all characteristics of stem cells.

The results of the study appear in the Feb. 1 issue of Cancer Research.

Source: United Press International

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