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Comparison of the growth curves of cancer cells and cancer stem cells.

A fundamental problem in cancer research is identification of the cells responsible for tumor formation. The latest field of cancer research has revealed the existence and role of cancer stem cells (CSCs). These findings support the idea that malignancies originate from a small fraction of cancer cells that show self-renewal and multi- or pluripotency. Identification of this CSC population has important implications for the management of cancer patients, including diagnostic and predictive laboratory assays as well as novel therapeutic strategies that specifically target CSCs. In this study, we investigated the growth rates of CSC populations for comparison with cancer cell lines. To construct the growth curves, blood-derived CSCs were isolated from patients with breast, colon, or lung cancer and cultured in vitro. Quantitative real-time PCR was then performed to identify CSCs in the samples. We found that CSCs did not follow the common pattern of a typical growth curve of mammalian cells in contrast to the cancer cell lines. This observation of rapidly growing CSCs indicates their involvement in tumor formation.