Preface.- Cancer Stem cell. A revisitation of “anaplasia” concept -- Stem cells and cancer stem cells- new insights -- Molecular biology of cancer stem cells -- Biomarkers of cancer stem cells -- Cancer stem cell and the microenvironment -- Leukemia stem cells -- Cancer stem cell and the central nervous system -- Cancer stem cells and glioblastoma multiforme. Pathophysiological and clinical aspects -- Breast cancer stem cells -- Colon cancer stem cells -- Liver Tumor-Initiating Cells / Cancer Stem Cells: Past Studies, Current Status and Future Perspectives -- Pancreatic cancer stem cells -- Cancer stem cell and renal carcinoma -- Cancer stem cells. Proteomic approaches for new potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers -- Cancer stem cells. An innovative therapeutic approach -- Cancer stem cell and ATP binding cassette. Which role in chemoresistance? -- Stem cell and cancer stem cells. Biological and clinical interrelationships -- Cancer stem cell and antitumor immunity -- Index.

Advances in Cancer Stem Cell Biology informs the reader about both basic and potential clinical applications of an intriguing subpopulation of cancer cells -defined in different way as cancer stem cells, cancer stem like cells, tumor maintaining cells and so on- which are deeply changing some fundamental aspects of molecular and clinical oncology. This text compiled by leading expert in the field, offers the readers a fundamental understanding about how these cells can contribute to a lot of intriguing and obscure aspects of cancer pathogenesis (i.e., cancer cell dormancy, chemoresistance, local and distant relapses). The Editors and contributing authors proficiently address the effects of cancer stem cells biological activities on the development and progression of cancer. While it remains true that there are no universal truths in cancer, Advances in Cancer Stem Cell Biology opens the discussion that pathophysiology of cancer can usually be associated with and significantly attributed to a particular subpopulation of cancer cells resembling in some molecular activities that of stem cells.