Targeting cancer stem cells in cancer prevention and therapy.

The cancer stem cell hypothesis is an attractive framework within which one may think about cancer initiation, recurrence, and metastasis, and methods to devise treatment strategies for cancers. Although all cancers do not appear to sustain themselves with cancer stem cells, but also through a dominant cell population, creating strategies for cancer treatment which include cancer stem cells as targets seems reasonable. In this perspective we discuss possible strategies for controlling the viability and tumorigenecity of cancer stem cells, and extend our discussion to strategies approaching the prevention of cancer.