John Dick

John Dick discovered cancer stem cells by demonstrating that only a rare subpopulation of human acute myeloid leukemia cells could initiate disease in immunodeficient mice, establishing the cancer stem cell hypothesis and the hierarchical organization of cancer that has transformed oncology. His subsequent work showed that leukemia stem cells reside at the apex of a differentiation hierarchy, are quiescent, and resist conventional chemotherapy, explaining treatment failure and relapse in AML. His xenotransplantation assays became the gold standard for identifying and characterizing cancer stem cells across all cancer types.