Figure 2
From: Cancer stem cells – the current status of an old concept: literature review and clinical approaches
Basic tumour heterogeneity models. A - Clonal evolution model. High proliferation and genomic instability result in a large number of cells differing in genotype and thus phenotype. The best fitted cells are selected by Darwinian processes to generate clonal variants of the tumour. B - Cancer stem cell model. CSC population is capable of unlimited number of divisions. Tumour heterogeneity results from existence of phenotypically diverse populations of different stages of cell maturation.