Systems biology and cancer stem cells: Stem Cells Review Series

Introduction Molecular profiling for cancer classification Molecular profiling of cancer stem cells Historical perspective: cancer stem cells in leukaemia Molecular profiling of brain cancer stem cells Molecular profiling of breast cancer stem cells Emerging technologies for proteome characterization Isobaric tagging for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ) Glyco-peptide capture Antibody microarrays using surface plasmon Resonance imaging (SPRI) DNA-enabled antibody libraries (DEAL) Biomolecular networks in cancer Perspective and concluding remarks Abstract The identification, purification and characterization of cancer stem cells (CSCs) holds tremendous promise for improving the treatment of cancer. Mounting evidence is demonstrating that only certain tumour cells (i.e. the CSCs) can give rise to tumours when injected and that these purified cell populations generate heterogeneous tumours. While the cell of origin is still not determined definitively, specific molecular markers for populations containing these CSCs have been found for leukaemia, brain cancer and breast cancer, among others. Systems approaches, particularly molecular profiling, have proven to be of great utility for cancer diagnosis and characterization. These approaches also hold significant promise for identifying distinctive properties of the CSCs, and progress is already being made.