化疗是癌症治疗中常用且简便的方法。然而，在大多数情况下，化疗只能延长预期寿命，不能完全治愈。此外，化疗与严重的不良反应有关，这是有效癌症治疗的主要并发症之一。此外，新近发表的研究成果显示，癌症干细胞参与了癌症进展、药物抗性、转移和复发，并且它们在对治疗的反应中具有癌症干细胞向癌细胞的转分化功能。因此，需要开发新的策略来更好地管理癌症治疗。首要的方法是合成和开发需要大量资源、时间和耐心才能应用于治疗的新药物。其次的方法是筛选可用非癌症药物的抗癌活性。近年来，非癌症药物再利用的概念作为当前癌症治疗的替代方法变得流行，因为使用现有抗癌药物会产生一些不良反应。微量营养素也已经被研究用于癌症治疗，因为它们具有显著的抗癌效果，几乎没有副作用，并且可以从食物中获取。在本文中，我们讨论了一种理想的假设，以筛选可用的具有抗癌活性的非癌症药物为重点，探讨了其在癌症干细胞及其临床应用于癌症治疗方面的意义。此外，再利用药物和结合微量营养素的方法可以同时针对肿瘤和癌症干细胞，可能会导致更好的治疗方法，并达到最大的肿瘤生长控制效果。© 2023作者。由KeAi Communications Co. Ltd.代表Elsevier B.V.提供出版服务。

Chemotherapy is an effortless and frequently used approach in cancer therapy. However, in most cases, it can only prolong life expectancy and does not guarantee a complete cure. Furthermore, chemotherapy is associated with severe adverse effects, one of the major complications of effective cancer therapy. In addition, newly published research outputs show that cancer stem cells are involved in cancer disease progression, drug resistance, metastasis, and recurrence and that they are functional in the trans-differentiation capacity of cancer stem cells to cancer cells in response to treatments. Novel strategies are therefore required for better management of cancer therapy. The prime approach would be to synthesize and develop novel drugs that need extensive resources, time, and endurance to be brought into therapeutic use. The subsequent approach would be to screen the anti-cancer activity of available non-cancerous drugs. This concept of repurposing non-cancer drugs as an alternative to current cancer therapy has become popular in recent years because using existing anticancer drugs has several adverse effects. Micronutrients have also been investigated for cancer therapy due to their significant anti-cancer effects with negligible or no side effects and availability in food sources. In this paper, we discuss an ideal hypothesis for screening available non-cancerous drugs with anticancer activity, with a focus on cancer stem cells and their clinical application for cancer treatment. Further, drug repurposing and the combination of micronutrients that can target both cancers and cancer stem cells may result in a better therapeutic approach leading to maximum tumor growth control.© 2023 The Authors. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.