Challenges and Promises of Targeting Cancer Stem Cells – the Proposed Achilles’ Heel of Cancer
Studies in the past two decades have identified a subpopulation of cancer cells called cancer stem cells (CSCs) or tumour-initiating cells (TICs) as being solely responsible for tumour initiation, progression, relapse, metastasis and drug resistance . Consequently, selective targeting of CSCs within the tumour cell population was initially thought to be a very promising therapeutic strategy to treating cancer.