Clinical Applications of Human Cancer Stem Cells

Our group has recently developed a high­throughput assay to identify compounds that selectively target human Cancer Stem Cells (CSCs) over healthy human SCs. Our approach uses a combination of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) and transformed neoplastic hPSCs that was developed into a fully automated high­content screening platform towards screening thousands of candidate compounds. We have used this platform as a surrogate human CSC model amenable to the screening of large numbers of compounds that enables prioritization of ‘hits’ for in vivo xenograft testing from primary patient tissue and has identified compounds now in Phase I trials. We will present the details of these developments, and our future perspective of using this system for novel cancer drug discovery in the future.