Novel approach to target cancer stem cells for therapy

Even though lots of efforts have been made to find different strategies for cancer treatments, currently available therapeutic approaches are chemotherapy, radiation and surgery or combination of these. These treatments prolonged the survival of patients but did not assure complete cure of the disease. Recent scientific evidences suggest that cancer stem cells (CSC) are responsible for recurrence, resistance and existence of this disease even after various therapeutic treatments. Therefore, we hypothesize that the best approach is to target CSCs along with cancer cells for complete remission of the disease. Before targeting these cells, studying their morphological, proliferation, behavioral aspects, physico-chemical interaction and characterizations are very important. For therapeutic approach the differentiation capacity of these cells to cancer cells with or without drugs is critical. To study basic parameters; the best approach would be aseptic sorting of CSCs from cancer cells based on specific cell surface markers by flowcytometer or magnetic cell sorter. The sorted cells have to be grown in culture conditions and treat with optimum concentrations of drugs to target CSC and cancer cell to find appropriate potential combination.