Chemotherapy: Open Access
Open Access

Drug development targeting cancer stem cells

International Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy

August 04-06, 2015 Valencia, Spain

Angel G Martin

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: Chemotherapy

Abstract :

Conventional anti-cancer treatment excels at tumor size reduction leading to clinically evident responses. However, these effects are frequently transient and are not associated with increased patient survival. Treatments are often too toxic to normal cells and they fail to selectively kill cancer stem cells (CSCs), which can survive treatment and, like the queen bee of a beehive, give rise to new malignant cells. Therefore CSCs are an underlying cause of tumor recurrence and metastasis. For truly effective treatments that can create a durable clinical response drugs that can target CSCs must be developed. Here we present data showing how functional assays for drug screening may be used to unravel compounds that target cancer stem cells, with a case study on drugs that inhibit activation of HIF dependent pathways.