The Importance of Spatial Distribution of Stemness and Proliferation State in Determining Tumor Radioresponse
Tumor growth and progression is a complex phenomenon dependent on the interaction of multiple intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Necessary for tumor development is a small subpopulation of potent cells, so-called cancer stem cells, that can undergo an unlimited number of cell divisions and which are proposed to divide symmetrically with a small probability to produce more cancer stem cells. We show that the majority of cells in a tumor must indeed be non-stem cancer cells with limited life span and...