Source: Stanford University Medical Center
Date: December 29, 2010
Summary:
Leukemia patients whose cancers express higher levels of genes associated with cancer stem cells have a significantly poorer prognosis than patients with lower levels of the genes, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The finding is among the first to show that the cancer stem cell hypothesis -- which posits that some cancers spring from and are replenished by a small, hardy population of self-renewing cells -- can be used to predict outcomes in a large group of patients and one day to tailor treatments in the clinic. Alizadeh is a co-senior author of the research, which will be published Dec. 22 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
