Cancer: could stem cells be involved?

Via the Life Exension Foundation:
Standard cancer treatments not only often fail to eradicate cancer, but can make it worse. That argument isn't coming from a fringe proponent of alternative medicine, but from the founder of the University of Michigan's Comprehensive Cancer Center and a pioneer in research on why cancers recur and spread to other parts of the body. The reason breast cancer and other malignancies often return aggressively after treatment is that when tumor cells die under assault from chemotherapy and radiation, they give off substances that can reactivate a special set of master cells known as cancer stem cells, Dr. Wicha said in an interview Tuesday. Dr. Wicha's lab has found that inflammatory molecules secreted by dying tumor cells can hook up with the stem cells and cause them in effect to come out of hibernation.

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