Stem the Flow

If you snip just the sprouting head off an invasive weed in your garden, it’ll grow back with a vengeance. Countering cancer can be the same, because of cancer stem cells: resistant, hard to spot cells with the potential to flourish into fresh tumours. These are a major target for anti-cancer drugs, but occur in small numbers so are hard to find and tackle. Researchers have now made a gel, composed of a network of chemicals and water, that encourages cancer cells to revert back to these stem cells. Cancer cells placed on the gel formed spherical structures (video, brain cancer cells) and produced molecules associated with cancer stem cells. The study then looked at this population of stem cells, identifying their properties and trialling new treatments, suggesting the gel could be used to help develop personalised treatments for particular cancers, and cut cancer off at the root.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Video from work by Jun Suzuka and colleagues
• Department of Cancer Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
• Video copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, March 2021