Cancer-Specific Stem Cell Identified for Gastric Cancer

May 12, 2014

(Oncology Nurse Advisor) – Scientists have identified the cancer-specific stem cell that causes gastric cancer. This discovery opens up the possibility of developing new drugs for the treatment of this disease and other types of cancers. The research group, led by Chan Shing Leng, PhD, of the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, Malaysia, demonstrated for the first time that a cancer-specific variant of a cell surface protein, CD44v8-10, marks gastric cancer stem cells but not normal cells. The study was also the first to be conducted with human gastric tissue specimens and took 5 years to complete.