Stem cells and brain cancer

An increasing body of research is showing that cancers might contain their own stem cells. In fact, cancer cells, like stem cells, can proliferate indefinitely through a deregulated cellular self-renewal capacity. This raises the possibility that some features of tumor cells may be due to cancer stem cells. Stem cell-like cancer cells were isolated from several solid tumors. Now, evidence has shown that brain cancers, such as glioblastomas, medulloblastomas and astrocytomas, also contain cells that may be multipotent neural stem cell-like cells. In this review, we discuss the results of these studies, along with the molecular pathways that could be involved in cancer stem cell physiopathology. © 2006 Nature Publishing Group. All rights reserved.