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Nature 442, 754-755 (17 August 2006) | doi:10.1038/442754a; Published online 16 August 2006

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Cancer biology: A game of subversion

Emmanuelle Passegué1

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Just as stem cells are crucial for tissue development and regeneration, cancer stem cells underlie tumour formation and maintenance. But do cancer stem cells invariably arise from normal stem cells?

It is now clear that certain tumours can be sustained by a rare population of cancer stem cells, which share one of the defining properties of normal stem cells — the ability to renew themselves. Self-renewal is what allows stem cells to persist during the lifetime of the organism and to provide new cells for tissue genesis, maintenance and regeneration following stress or injury.

  1. Emmanuelle Passegué is in the Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Program and the Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, 513 Parnassus Avenue, San Francisco, California 94314, USA.
    Email: passeguee@stemcell.ucsf.edu