Abstract: The present disclosure provides methods and formulations for treating a patient suffering from one or more of chronic inflammatory injury, metaplasia, dysplasia or cancer of an epithelial tissue, which method comprises administering to the patient an agent that selectively kills or inhibits the proliferation or differentiation of pathogenic epithelial stem cells (PESCs) relative to normal epithelial stem cells in the tissue in which the PESCs are found. Representative epithelial tissues include pulmonary, genitourinary, gastrointestinal/esophageal, pancreatic and hepatic tissues.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a culture media system that is useful for the isolation and epigenetically stable propagation of normal stem cells in culture which are derived from columnar epithelial tissues and cancer stem cells from epithelial cancers. In certain embodiments, the culture system is a feeder-free system.