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Cancer

Repositioned to kill stem cells

Nature volume 525, pages 328–329 (2015)Cite this article

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Chemotherapy-resistant cancer stem cells make it hard to cure many forms of the disease. Repositioning an existing drug to tackle this problem could significantly improve treatment for one form of leukaemia. See Letter p.380

In most cases of chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML), a daily oral medication can rapidly transform a progressive and ultimately fatal cancer into a chronic but manageable condition. But this is not a cure. The persistence of quiescent (dormant, non-cycling) and thus drug-resistant leukaemic stem cells (LSCs) poses an unmet clinical challenge, and any attempt to cure CML must target the eradication of these cells. In this issue, Prost et al.1 (page 380) present provocative preclinical and early clinical findings demonstrating that a drug currently used for diabetes therapy can be repositioned to target a pathway that controls quiescence in LSCs, causing the gradual erosion of this cellular pool.

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Figure 1: Targeting leukaemic stem cells in chronic myeloid leukaemia.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tessa Holyoake and David Vetrie are at the Institute of Cancer Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 0ZD (T.H.) and Glasgow G61 1QH (D.V.), UK.,

    Tessa Holyoake & David Vetrie

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  1. Tessa Holyoake
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  2. David Vetrie
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Correspondence to Tessa Holyoake or David Vetrie.

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Holyoake, T., Vetrie, D. Repositioned to kill stem cells. Nature 525, 328–329 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature15213

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