TY - JOUR T1 - Senescent Cells in Growing Tumors: Population Dynamics and Cancer Stem Cells A1 - La Porta, Caterina A. M. A1 - Zapperi, Stefano A1 - Sethna, James P. Y1 - 2012/01/19 N2 - Author Summary It is commonly believed that cell senescence – the loss of replicative capacity of cells – acts as a barrier for tumor growth. Here we follow the evolution of senescence markers in melanoma cells and find that while most cancer cells eventually turn senescent, this is at root irrelevant for the long-term growth rate of a tumor. To demonstrate this, we construct a mathematical population dynamics model incorporating cancer stem cells which is able to reproduce quantitatively the experimental data. Our results support the existence of cancer stem cells in melanoma and explain why it is difficult to fight cancer by inducing senescence in cancer cells. Only a fraction of the cells are susceptible to senescence, but those cells are irrelevant for tumor growth. A successful therapeutic strategy should instead target cancer stem cells, which are, however, likely to be strongly resistant to drug induced senescence. JF - PLOS Computational Biology JA - PLOS Computational Biology VL - 8 IS - 1 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002316 SP - e1002316 EP - PB - Public Library of Science M3 - doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002316 ER -