Cancer: The stem cells that make cancer run riot. Kill them and you could destroy the disease…

By Steve Boggan

PUBLISHED: 21:34 EST, 19 November 2012 | UPDATED: 21:34 EST, 19 November 2012

Professor Ian Mackenzie points to a little jumble of cells on a computer screen and smiles.

Theyre cancer stem cells, he says. Not everyone in medicine believes in them yet, but look there they are.

Even to the untrained eye, its clear there are two distinct types of cell; one that groups together a little like frogspawn, and another that looks like a slug.

Stem cells, which are found in tissue all over the body, can grow into every kind of cell, including bone, skin and blood cells

If you watched the slug-like one for long enough, youd see it move, says the professor.

We believe this type of stem cell facilitates the spread of cancer and that the other is responsible for the growth of tumours and for making them return after you think your cancer has gone away.

In Professor Mackenzies laboratory at Barts and the London Medical Schools Blizard Institute, researchers are busy extracting these cells from tumours.

Their work represents a potentially extraordinary new approach to the disease.

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Cancer: The stem cells that make cancer run riot. Kill them and you could destroy the disease...