What is the difference between cancer stem cells and normal stem cells?
Cancer stem cells share many characteristics with normal stem cells. For example, a normal stem cell can self-renew, which means the daughter cells retain their numbers and properties/functions as the mother cells. Cancer stem cells also maintain the ability to self-renew. A few cancer stem cells could evade treatment and later give rise to a tumor, referred to as cancer relapse. The tumors formed are really the progenies of the cancer stem cells. Like all progenies of stem cells, they multiply rapidly. However, the progenies of cancer stem cells are not like normal progenies, whose growth are tightly controlled so that there is never too many or too few. The cancer stem cell could be considered as a normal stem cell “gone wrong”. A major difference between the progenies of a normal stem cell and those from a cancer stem cell is that progenies of normal stem cells eventually form mature cells, whereas progenies of cancer stem cells form rapidly dividing progenitor cells which do not fu
