The recurrence of colon cancer in patients after treatment is linked to a pattern of genes expressed in the tumour that is specific to intestinal stem cells.

Eduard Batlle at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona, Spain, and his colleagues isolated cells from pockets in the mouse intestinal wall known to house stem cells. They found that intestinal stem cells had the highest expression of a gene called Ephb2, and that about 50 other genes were also upregulated. Analysis of samples from 340 patients with colon cancer revealed an association between high expression levels of these genes and increased risk of relapse.

When human tumour cells were implanted in mice, cells expressing the highest levels of Ephb2 showed the greatest capacity for initiating tumours at low cell dosages.

Cell Stem Cell doi:10.1016/j.stem.2011.02.020 (2011)