Fifteen years ago, John Dick, a molecular biologist at the University of Toronto, discovered that not all cancer cells are created equal. Specifically, he showed that only a small population of self-renewing leukemia cells could create tumors, dubbing these cancer stem cells (CSCs). So, scientists asked: Can we wipe out cancer by targeting just these few rogue cells?
The model really took off in 2003 when Michael Clarke, Max Wicha, Sean Morrison, and their colleagues at the University of Michigan discovered CSCs in breast cancer—the first evidence of the cancerous supervillains in a solid tumor.
In 2007, the CSC hypothesis was thrown for a loop, however, after a team led by Kornelia ...
