Targeting Metabolism to Induce Cell Death in Cancer Cells and Cancer Stem Cells

Figure 3

Needs of combinatorial therapies that target cancer cells and CSCs. A tumor is a complex mix of cancer cells including differentiated cells at different stages as well as CSCs. Current treatments kill cancer cells without affecting cancer stem cells (1). However, since CSCs are not affected, there is a major risk of tumor recurrence (2). Targeting only CSCs might result in a reduced number of matured cells but that will not be sufficient to eradicate the tumor (3). Thus, cancer therapy should ideally target both CSCs and matured cells (4) by generally increasing sensitivity to cell death of all the cell types as well as reducing the proliferation of matured cells and inducing differentiation and sensibility to cell death of CSCs.