  Since the discovery of a cancer initiating side population in solid tumours,
studies focussing on the role of so-called cancer stem cells in cancer
initiation and progression have abounded. The biological interrogation of these
cells has yielded volumes of information about their behaviour, but there has,
as of yet, not been many actionable generalised theoretical conclusions. To
address this point, we have created a hybrid, discrete/continuous computational
cellular automaton model of a generalised stem-cell driven tissue and explored
the phenotypic traits inherent in the inciting cell and the resultant tissue
growth. We identify the regions in phenotype parameter space where these
initiating cells are able to cause a disruption in homeostasis, leading to
tissue overgrowth and tumour formation. As our parameters and model are
non-specific, they could apply to any tissue cancer stem-cell and do not assume
specific genetic mutations. In this way, our model suggests that targeting
these phenotypic traits could represent generalizable strategies across cancer
types and represents a first attempt to identify the hallmarks of cancer stem
cells.
