Stem Cells and Cancer Treatment

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When any of us do a Google search for stem cells and cancer treatment, one problem we face is that while we all enter the same search terms, not all of us are looking for the same thing.

Searching this, one may be seeking information about:

  • whether stem cells can cure cancer
  • the use of stem cell transplants in treating cancer
  • what science has learned about so-called cancer stem cells

Broadly speaking, stem cell therapy represents a field of medicine known as regenerative medicine: the basic idea is that certain cells in the body are non-specific cells, meaning they have not developed into a specific type of cell yet, such as a lung cell or a blood cell. They are awaiting instruction from the body on which type of cell to become. The excitement behind this discovery is the hope that we can discover ways of instructing these blank-slate cells to develop into the kinds of cells required by the body. For instance, a person with diabetes no longer has cells producing the needed insulin for their body. The hope and the promise of stem cell therapy is that we will be able to direct that person's adult stem cells to migrate to the right area of the pancreas and become the cells that produce insulin, thereby-- in theory-- curing the patient's diabetes. This is several thousand times easier said than done.

Stem Cells and Cancer Treatment

Some stem cells have been used to treat some cancers for several decades. It is done using blood stem cells-- stem cells that can develop only into one of the many types of blood cells.

In this case, patients with blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma may undergo a so-called stem cell transplant. In this procedure, high doses of chemotherapy and radiation are used to kill all the cancerous white blood cells in their body. In an effort to get all the cancer cells, the high doses used have the effect of wiping out the patient's entire population of white blood cells. In effect, the patient is left without an immune system. Then, they receive a transplant of blood stem cells (these stem cells can either come from the patient themselves prior to chemotherapy, or they can come from a matched donor). The effect is to have removed all cancerous cells from the body and replaced the white blood cell population with an infusion of blood stem cells that will re-create or re-establish the patient's white blood cells and other necessary blood cells.

This therapy was first developed in the early 1970s, and is in wide use today against cancers of the blood. Stem cell transplants are not used for other types of cancer because they do not work for other types of cancer. In the 1990s it became a popular option for breast cancer patients, but the science and the research did not support its use. Eventually it was proven that this therapy was not effective against this type of cancer.*

Cancer Stem Cells

Finally, there is the cancer stem cell. What is a cancer stem cell? According to research conducted at Standford University and elsewhere, in many cancers there is a small population of cancer stem cells; these are cells that "self-renew to replenish the growing cancer."

Research is underway to discover treatment pathways that can cut off and kill this self-renewing source of cancer cells.

Sources
Stem Cell Transplants
Stanford University
*The failed use of stem cell transplants in the 1990s is explored in The $800 Million Pill by Merrill Goozner.

 

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