According to a British study, being able to identify and study cancer stem cells in the laboratory could accelerate understanding of cells, leading to development of drugs that specifically target them.

In a university news release, Dr. Trevor Yeung from Oxford University’s Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine said a tumours growth is driven by cancer stem cells. By targeting treatments for these cells specifically, it may be possible to eradicate the cancer completely.

While, radiotherapy and chemotherapy do prevent cells from rapidly dividing, it is increasingly becoming evident that cancer stem cells are more resistant to this treatment, than other cells, leading to a later recurrence of cancer, as some cancer stem cells may not have been eradicated.

Developing a new method of harvesting cancer stem cell rich samples from bowel cancer cell lines, Yeung and colleagues maintained them in simple cell cultures in the laboratory. Using established cell lines known as biological markers for isolating cancer stem cells, they collected and placed them in standard cell culture conditions.

They believe this approach will change how research is conducted on stem cell cancer lines enabling repeatable, large-scale drug screening; including assisting in characterising cancer stem cells and the role they play in tumour growth.

As well, researchers also determined that cancer stem cells were not just a small sub-set of cells within a tumour, as believed, but the most aggressive tumours were found to have a majority of cancer stem cells.

The study is to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.