MIT geeks do all the best stuff. The Telegraph reports that researchers at the university recently discovered a compound, Salinomycin, that kills cancer stem cells that were previously though to be invulnerable. These are the cells that seed tumors, are resistant to chemotherapy and radiation, and are thought to be responsible for the return and aggressiveness of many cancer types.

Clinical use of this compound won’t come to fruition for a while — there is an unbelievable number of hurdles to jump before the FDA approves anything — but this discovery puts us one step closer to trouncing the bitch we call cancer.