Cancer stem cell models and role in drug discovery

With the cementing of the cancer stem cell (CSC) concept, cancer -biology and cancer drug discovery has attained a new avenue to approach cancer from. Studying the hierarchy of tumor tissue organization and how to inhibit the cell that resides at the very top of this hierarchy has opened up a new branch of tumor biology and given the opportunity to develop novel inhibitors that target cancer. With the -discovery of CSCs in majority of cancer indications there seems to be a universal applicability of the concept. However, the CSC field is still at an early fledgling state and a lot more needs to be done in terms of understanding their emergence, maintenance, role in metastasis and determining the architecture of the tumor.