Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer among men and among women in the U.S. and does not cause symptoms early, which is why routine screening is essential.
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Colon cancer is a global killer.
Each year more than one million people worldwide are diagnosed with it; more than half a million die from it.
If diagnosed early enough the standard treatment involves surgery, chemotherapy, radiation or targeted drug therapy to destroy the tumors.
But in some cases, while this approach helps put people in remission, eventually the cancer returns, spreads throughout the body, and ultimately proves fatal.Now researchers may have identified a protein that causes normal cells to become cancerous, and turn into cancer stem cells (CSCs).
This discovery could help provide a new target for anti-cancer therapies.Cancer stem cells are devilishly tricky.
While most cancer cells are killed by chemotherapy or other therapies, cancer stem cells are able to lie dormant and hide, then emerge later to grow and spread, causing the person to relapse and the cancer to return.In a study published in Nature Research’s Scientific Reports, researchers at SU Health New Orleans School of Medicine and Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center identified a protein, called SATB2, that appears to act as an “on/off” switch for specific genes inside a cancer cell.In normal, healthy colorectal tissue SATB2 is not active, but in colorectal cancer it is highly active, found in around 85 percent of tumors.