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ARTICLE | Emerging Company Profile

Verastem: Cancer stem cell engine

Verastem removes bottleneck to finding drug compounds against cancer stem cells

August 15, 2011 7:00 AM UTC

Cancer stem cells have long been recognized as important therapeutic targets, but growing enough of them to allow for screening with typical drug discovery methods has been a challenge. Verastem Inc. believes its techniques have removed the bottleneck to high throughput screening.

Cancer stem cells (CSCs), which often remain after treatment with chemo- or radiotherapies, are believed to be responsible for disease recurrence and can migrate through the body to form metastases...