Cancer Chemoprevention & Therapeutics Lab

Most of the traditional chemotherapeutic strategies implicated in cancer therapy involve targeting proliferating cells manifested in neoplastic transformations. Therapies aimed at targeting these transformed cells have not been shown efficient because of recurrence, drug resistance, and poor prognosis in addition of substantial toxicity to normal tissue too. The pre-existing theory that a tumor is made up of cells with similar sequentially acquired mutations and have similar potential for renewal, invasion, and metastasis has been replaced by the emerging theory that cancer stem cells (CSCs) are the driving element in cancer development, evolution, and heterogeneity.  The initiation and re-emergence of cancer has been attributed to a subpopulation of few mutated and transformed cells in tumor population, called tumor initiating cells (TICs) or cancer stem cells (CSC), which acquire capacity of self-renewal and differentiation. Cancer stem cells are known to resist the traditional methods of chemo and radio therapy. Thus strategies aimed at targeting breast cancer stem cells (CSC) with nutritional compounds or diet derived interventions and their synthetic analogues may provide novel cancer treatment strategies for cancer chemoprevention and therapeutics.