I’m attending American Association of Cancer Research annual meeting in Washington DC right now. I’m enjoying meeting so far and planning to share with you some of my brief notes – quotes (tweet-like style) that I took during cancer stem cell sessions yesterday and today.
Unfortunately Andreas Trumpp talk was cancel due volcano activity in Iceland, so most of my notes from 3 speakers: Sean Morrison , Jeremy Rich and Carlo Maley.
Dr. Rich:
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- 2 theories (clonal evolution and cancer stem cells) are not mutually exclusive and likely act concurrently;
- cancer stem cell (CSC) are functionally definded by self-renewal, susteained proliferation and tumor initiation -propagation ability;
- CSC act not in cell autonomous manner
- other proposed functional characteristics of CSC – evasion-metastasis, immune evasion, relation to niche, angiogenesis;
- cell lines fail to replicate original heterogeneity.
Dr. Morrison:
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- tumorigeneity is very much assay-dependent;
- surface markers (CD133 for instance) frequently does not distinguish tumorigenuc vs. non-tumorigenic populations;
- cancers need to be hierarchycally organized in order to be heterogeneous;
- heterogeneity is driven by reversible phenotypically changes and irreversible genetic changes;
- no xenotransplant assay recapitulates the immune response that occurs in some patients;
- immunocompetence should be tested with mouse models of cancer transplanted into histocompatible recipients;
- tumor genotype can have an impact to tumorigeneity assays and frequency of SCS;
- the potential of cancer cells to proliferate extensevely is context dependent.
Dr. Maley:
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- natural selection should lead to neoplasms dominated almost completely by cancer stem cells but we don’t see that;
- hierarchy of CSC is an assumption which should be tested further;
- current assays confound engraftment with stemness;
- non-CSC have fitness effect on CSC, such as: niche-stroma and supression of competitors, they must co-exist.
and the last point for today, but very important:
Gerald Cunha:
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- non-tumorigeneic is mean able to survive in mice for few months without tumor formation.
twitter hashtags: #AACR10 #cancerSC
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