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Found the antidote cells can 'revive' the cancer

When a tumor is attacked by chemotherapy, a handful of particularly aggressive cells are the last to resist, even the seem invincible point: cancer stem cells, allowing tumor growth and drug resistance.

However, a group of U.S. scientists has just written a new chapter in cancer research to find a compound capable of removing solely to these cells, the salinomycin. The findings appear in the latest issue of the journal Cell .
This compound, selected from more than 16,000, manages to kill not only cancer stem cells produced in the laboratory, but those that grow naturally.
In fact, compared with the most common chemotherapy drug for breast cancer, the type of cancer that has studied the salinomycin-multiplied by 100 the number of dead stem cells in mice and is even able to reduce tumor size .
"Many therapies kill the bulk of the tumor only to see it grow back, "says Eric Lander, director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (USA), who believes that this finding opens the door to new anticancer teapias. Technical Difficulties

Although he knew the importance of these cells, the major barrier faced by scientists to study was the difficulty to develop directly in the laboratory. Relatively low compared with other tumor cells often lose their stem cell properties when grown outside the body.
To overcome these barriers, used a technique to convert adult cells into cells mother through epithelial-mesencimal transition, which causes a critical change in these molecules. Thus
have developed a sufficient number of cancer stem cells to test up to 16,000 natural chemicals and trade against them.
Using a method that allows the systematic search for agents that kill these cells made a first selection of 32 candidate compounds. Among them the clear winner was the salinomycin.
Although it is unclear why this compound has antibiotic such destructive power against these cells, and its success opened a new avenue in cancer research.
"Until now rational cancer therapies were designed against specific molecular alterations present in the tumor, the scientists listed in the article.
"These findings indicate that a second form can also be useful: find the agents that cause the different stages of differentiation of cancer cells," they conclude.

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