According to a report published in the journal Cell, the drug salinomycin, cut the number of stem cells at least 100 times more than did Bristol-Myers Squibb Co."s, Taxol [paclitaxel]. Some researchers believe that cancerous stem cells are responsible for tumor growth and that these cells are highly resistant to chemotherapy. Standard chemotherapy treatments kill 99 percent of cells in a tumor leaving the stem cells that allow reoccurrence of the cancer. For the study, cancer cells were cultivated from breast tumors in a way that increased the number of stem cells and 16,000 commercially available compounds were screened until salinomycin was identified as the most potent. The drug was shown to inhibit the ability of the cancer stem cells to cause new tumor growth as well as impeding growth of existing tumors when injected into mice. According to Dr John Stingl, group leader in mammary stem cell biology at Cancer Research UK"s Cambridge Research Institute, "the challenge for the future is to bring this class of drugs to the clinic and to identify the patients that are likely to respond to them."
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