Stanford Report, July 12, 2006

Scientific American features Clarke

Stem cells in our tissues have the ability to divide indefinitely to repair damaged cells. When everything works smoothly, built-in controls restrict the stem cells to only divide when needed.

"Remove those control mechanisms, and the result would be something that sounds very much like malignancy," Michael Clarke, PhD, wrote in the cover story in the July issue of Scientific American.

Clarke, the Karel H. and Avice N. Beekhuis Professor in Cancer Biology, discusses the relatively new field of cancer stem cells. These uncontrolled stem cells are at the endlessly dividing heart of cancers of the breast, brain and blood system.

Clarke found the breast cancer stem cell in 2003. He suggests that cancer stem cells are likely to surface in other tumors as research continues.

Now researchers in the field are looking for ways of identifying those cancer stem cells and marking them for destruction. "If traditional therapies shrink a tumor but miss these cells, the cancer is likely to return," Clarke wrote.

Clarke wrote the piece with Michael Becker, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center.