Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have allegedly turned normal skin cells into cancer stem cells. Although this may seem an odd accomplishment, it is expected to advance cancer research because cancer stem cells, which are believed to be the type which drives cancer growth, are difficult to grow in the lab. However, some researchers are not convinced that cancer stem cells exist at all.

"The upshot is that there may be a way to directly create cancer stem cells in the lab so you don't always have to purify these rare cells from patients in order to study them directly," Howard Chang, MD, PhD, assistant professor of dermatology and senior author of the work, said.

The researchers at Stanford found that one "oncogene", Myc, seems to be a key regulator in converting skin cells to stem cells, which when overexpressed appears to induce tumors. Their research will be published in the April 10 issue of Cell Stem Cell.

Also, University of Michigan biologists have revealed some aspects of a common cell-to-cell signaling system shedding light on cancer stem cells. They developed an experimental treatment which tries to block cancer stem cells using a so-called Notch inhibitor. This treatment method was considered dangerous because of the possibility that it may also block normal stem cells, essential to the survival of the patient.

"Our data indicate that normal blood-forming stem cells should not be damaged by the Notch inhibitor drug being used in these patients," said Dr. Ivan Maillard, lead author of the study published also in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

The findings, highlighted in experiments on mice, point out that there are significant differences between normal stem cells and cancer stem cells. This means that cancer stem cells could be targeted specifically.