Editorial

Breast cancer stem cell markers – the rocky road to clinical applications

Gabriela Dontu

Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA

author email corresponding author email

Breast Cancer Research 2008, 10:110doi:10.1186/bcr2130

Published:	15 September 2008

See related research article by Honeth et al., http://breast-cancer-research.com/content/10/3/R53

Abstract

Lately, understanding the role of cancer stem cells in tumor initiation and progression became a major focus in stem cell biology and in cancer research. Considerable efforts, such as the recent studies by Honeth and colleagues, published in the June issue of Breast Cancer Research, are directed towards developing clinical applications of the cancer stem cell concepts. This work shows that the previously described CD44+CD24- stem cell phenotype is associated with basal-type breast cancers in human patients, in particular BRCA1 inherited cancers, but does not correlate with clinical outcome. These very interesting findings caution that the success of our efforts in translating cancer stem cell research into clinical practice depends on how thorough and rigorous we are at characterizing these cells.