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Tumour biology

Skin-cancer stem cells outwitted

Nature volume 478, pages 329–330 (2011)Cite this article

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Skin-cancer stem cells secrete a factor that organizes a blood-supply system to fuel tumour growth. But the same factor has another sinister function — it stimulates the stem cells to propagate uncontrollably. See Letter p.399

The most frequently diagnosed cancers in industrialized countries are non-melanoma skin cancers, including squamous-cell and basal-cell carcinomas1. Like most other solid tumours, squamous-cell carcinomas harbour a subset of cells known as cancer stem cells2,3, which initiate and propagate the tumour by a hitherto unknown mechanism. On page 399 of this issue, Beck and colleagues4 reveal that these cells secrete copious amounts of a growth factor that uses a two-pronged strategy to ensure that tumour growth continues indefinitely. They show that obstructing this dual activity causes the pool of cancer stem cells to shrink and the tumour to regress.

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Figure 1: Two-pronged effects of VEGF.

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  1. Salvador Aznar Benitah is at the Center for Genomic Regulation and UPF (CRG), 08003 Barcelona, Spain.,

    Salvador Aznar Benitah

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  1. Salvador Aznar Benitah
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Correspondence to Salvador Aznar Benitah.

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Benitah, S. Skin-cancer stem cells outwitted. Nature 478, 329–330 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/478329a

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