All cancers show inversion of the pH gradient. In those with high proliferation the inversion is more noticeable than with lower growth. But the fact that there is extracellular acidity and intracellular alkalinity is a constant feature of all cancers.

Thanks for your valuable reply Tomas Koltai & Jiang Kunpeng

Tomas Koltai

if pH inversion is a general role in cancer tumor, so there are similarities between cancer and stem cells, for instance:

probably the niche (micro-environment) of stem cells is responsible for the special quality of stem cells (vice versa) which provided by the bystander and surrounded cells, thus ph feature (which has been provided by bystanders) may responsible for imposing a cancer stem cells.

BEst, pejman

Dear Abasi

I would speak of cancer initiating cells (CAC) instead of stem cells. CAC are usually found in highly hypoxic and acidic niches of the tumor. But when these CACs are dormant they show no mitotic activity and therefore their cytoplasm is probably not so alkaline as in highly proliferating cells. Of course, all these is speculative. Nobody, so far, has measured intracellular pH of CACs.

Dr Tomas Koltai I really appreciate your valuable information and am thankful for the time and patience you have considered for the question.

cancer stem cells definition means a group of mutations toward achieving a variety of potential which included immortality, malignancy and so on. predominantly, a gradual step by step adjustment (what comes by mutation) lead to cancer stem cells, and interestingly mutation would never be stopped. by the way, I think drugs and limitation what imposed by bystander cells or physician would direct all those mutation.

but cancer-initiating cells (CAC) probably means there are cancer resources cells in our body naturally (please take a look at the attached picture).

I tried to illustrate by a picture.

BEst

As far as I know when cancerous cells start to grow out of control, a noticeable change happens in the cells environment

Dear Sina

That is true. But before any environmental change happens there is an internal change. You will find in Reshkin SJ et al. FASEB 2000 that the first step in malignant transformation is a change of intracellular pH. This has been confirmed by many other papers.

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dear Tomas Koltai

yes this is true, thank you for mentioning this point