Identifikation und Charakterisierung von hoch-metastatischen und therapie-resistenten Tumorstammzellen beim Pankreaskarzinom

Introduction: Despite our advancing knowledge of tumor cell biology, the treatment efficacy in most cancers has not significantly improved over the past decades. Accumulating evidence suggests that cancer may actually be a disease of stem cells. It has been shown that a small fraction of cancer cells bear stem cells properties and one possible explanation would be that these cancer stem cells (CSC) are derived from normal tissue stem cells. So far, however, in solid tumors these CSC have only been described for brain and breast cancer and their biological properties with respect to tumor progression remain enigm…