Fig. 1

Potential impact of strategies that target cancer stem cells (CSCs) on the effectiveness of cancer treatment. Conventional cancer therapies result in a transient reduction of the tumour by killing non-stem cancer cells whilst failing to eliminate CSCs. Two major obstacles are limiting success in these cancer therapies: the ability of CSCs to survive cytotoxic treatments, and their potential to form metastases. The use of CSC specific inhibitors would reduce their therapy resistance and reduce relapse, and would prevent their spread, as the loss of stem cell properties reduces invasiveness and the capacity of disseminated cells to initiate distant secondary colonies