Cancer is a primary cause of human mortality worldwide. Despite decades of basic and clinical research, the outcome for most cancer patients is still dismal. Some stumbling blocks to developing effective therapy include the heterogeneity of cancer tissues, the lack of knowledge about the critical molecular mechanisms in cancer tissues (which are typically aberrant compared with mechanisms in normal tissue), and the lack of good mechanism-based therapeutic approaches. The recent findings that most cancers contain a small fraction of self-renewing, differentiation-blocked stem cell-like...

Cancer is a primary cause of human mortality worldwide. Despite decades of basic and clinical research, the outcome for most cancer patients is still dismal. Some stumbling blocks to developing effective therapy include the heterogeneity of cancer tissues, the lack of knowledge about the critical molecular mechanisms in cancer tissues (which are typically aberrant compared with mechanisms in normal tissue), and the lack of good mechanism-based therapeutic approaches. The recent findings that most cancers contain a small fraction of self-renewing, differentiation-blocked stem cell-like...