Systems biology and cancer stem cells

The identification, purification and characterization of cancer stem cells (CSCs) holds tremendous promise for improving the treatment of cancer. Mounting evidence is demonstrating that only certain tumour cells (i.e. the CSCs) can give rise to tumours when injected and that these purified cell populations generate heterogeneous tumours. While the cell of origin is still not determined definitively, specific molecular markers for populations containing these CSCs have been found for leukaemia, brain cancer and breast cancer, among others. Systems approaches, particularly molecular profiling, have proven to be of great utility for cancer diagnosis and characterization. These approaches also hold significant promise for identifying distinctive properties of the CSCs, and progress is already being made.