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Although the hypothesis is still controversial, many experts believe that tumors start from and are perpetuated by cancer stem cells (CSCs) — cells that have the capacity to replicate themselves constantly (as do regular stem cells) and to differentiate into malignant cells. CSCs typically are not killed by chemotherapy or radiation therapy, which might explain why conventional therapies are not curative, even when they achieve huge reductions in tumor burden: The CSCs remain to regenerate the cancer. Finding drugs that selectively kill CSCs has been difficult, because very few of these cells exist within any tumor.
A Boston research team developed a technique for generating large numbers of breast CSCs in vitro. They tested 16,000 compounds…