A colorized scanning electron micrograph of a human brain cancer stem cell. Cell bodies are in orange; nuclei in green. Cancer stem cells possess characteristics of normal stem cells, specifically the ability to give rise to all cell types found in a particular cancer sample. That makes them a particularly enticing target for developing cancer therapies, especially those prone to metastasis or recurrence.
Image courtesy of Izzat Suffian, Pedro Costa, Stephen Pollard, David McCarthy & Khuloud T. Al-Jamal.