“Latest Stem Cells News”

Destroying abnormal stem cells could be a way to kill off bowel cancer in its very earliest stages, say UK experts.
Immature cells line the gut and normally replace and repair the tissue but malfunctions can lead to cancer.
Scientists believe detecting and obliterating these rogue cancer stem cells as soon as they appear could be a potent new anti-cancer strategy.

A UK National Stem Cell Network conference heard the same method might also work for other cancers.
Professor Malcolm Alison, of Barts and The London School of Medicine, has been looking at how bowel cancers grow and spread in the body.
He said there was mounting evidence to show that faulty self-renewing stem cells are to blame.

And like the root of a weed, unless they are removed they will continue to propagate.
Scientists are still uncertain exactly which cells in the gut become cancer stem cells.
But they know definitively that they exist – and that they play a central role in the formation of cancer.

Once these are found, it would be possible to identify and treat these cells before life-threatening tumours develop, said Professor Alison.

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The Jumonjd3 protein is a sort of nervous system regulator, allowing stem cells to become neural cells.  Researchers from the IFOM-IEO Campus of the European Institute of Oncology (EIO) in Milan, whose studies were published in Plos One magazine discovered the regulator protein.  The researchers explained that the protein is an enzyme capable of activating the stem cell genes necessary to differentiate a cell into a nervous system cell.

The result, underlined the scientists led by Giusepe Testa, “adds an important perspective to understanding the intricate mechanisms of stem cell function.” This protein could soon become “a target to improve on reprogramming already differentiated cells and developing new anti-tumor therapies.” The study was supported by the Italian Association for Cancer Research and the Umberto Veronesi Foundation, among others.

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