New models towards assessing anti-cancer therapeutics

Review.-- Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivatives License.
Cancer is the subject of intense research around the world, but many questions about how the disease works remain unanswered. How exactly does cancer start and how do tumours grow? In fact, at present there are ten times more anticancer drugs being tested in clinical trials than there were 15 years ago. However, many of the new anticancer agents are predicted to show clinical benefit in only small subpopulations of patients. The cancer stem cell model could explain not only how some cancers work but also why patients suffer relapses, providing a good opportunity to gain insight into the reasons why agents work or, more commonly, don't work, before going into a clinical trial.
Research in ISG group was partially supported by FEDER and by MICINN (SAF2009-08803 to ISG), by Junta de Castilla y León (REF. CSI007A11-2 and Proyecto Biomedicina 2009-2010 to ISG), by MEC OncoBIO Consolider-Ingenio 2010 (Ref. CSD2007-0017), by NIH grant (R01 CA109335-04A1), by Sandra Ibarra Foundation, by Group of Excellence Grant (GR15) from Junta de Castilla y Leon, and the ARIMMORA project (FP7-ENV-2011, European Union Seventh Framework Program) and by proyecto en red de investigación en celulas madre tumorales en cancer de mama supported by Obra Social Kutxa y Conserjería de Sanidad de la Junta de Castilla y Leon. All Spanish funding is co-sponsored by the European Union FEDER program. ISG is an API lab of the EuroSyStem project. J. Pérez-Losada is partially supported by FEDER and MICINN (PLE2009-119), FIS (PI10/00328), Fundación Eugenio Rodríguez Pascual, Fundación Inbiomed, Instituto Oncológico, Obra Social de la Caja Guipozkoa-San Sebastián (Kutxa). A. Castellanos-Martín is supported by FEDER and MICINN (PLE2009-119).