The cellular root of colorectal cancers? Researchers at
Children's Hospital Boston have found a marker called ABCB5 that
both tags a small proportion of cells within colorectal cancers
and fuels resistance in those cells to standard treatments. The
results indicate that eliminating ABCB5-expressing cells is
crucial for successful colorectal cancer treatment, while adding
to the growing body of evidence for a theory of cancer growth
called the cancer stem cell hypothesis. An international team
led by Brian J. Wilson, PhD, Tobias Schatton, PhD, and Markus
Frank, MD, of the Transplantation Research Center at Children's
Hospital Boston, and Natasha Frank, MD, of the VA Boston
Healthcare System and Brigham and Women's Hospital, and
colleagues at the University of Wurzburg in Germany reported the
findings online in the journal Cancer Research on June 7, 2011.
An estimated 141,000 Americans will be diagnosed with colorectal
cancer this year. While its mortality has been dropping over the
last two decades thanks to s