Health Policy - Dr. Mike Magee provides education and insight into health policy and current healthcare issues.: "And lastly, we know that in some circumstances, normal blood stem cells accelerate aging in response to chemotherapy and radiation while the cancer stem cells for some reason are immune.5,6 This means that with each successive treatment, the cancer stem cells may be gaining a competitive advantage. It’s imperative that we gain better understanding of the biologic and clinical consequences of our current therapies and continue to use this knowledge to design new ones.
If there’s anything in this information to ponder, it should be this. One, stem cell biology is critically related to the behavior of human cancers. Two, the eradication of cancer stem cells will be essential to improving survival rates for people with some cancers. Three, it is possible that current approaches to therapy in some cancers may be preferentially benefiting those cancers’ stem cells, which mean future therapies must take this into account. And finally, in the future, just wiping out the bulk of a tumor may not be an adequate measure of success. Rather, we will need to address the core of the problem, which is likely to reside where the cancer stem cells live and thrive."
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