Cancer stem cells(CSCs), a special subpopulation of tumor cells, are considered as tumor initiating cells.These cells have been more recently identified also as initiators of tumor neovascularization.A better understanding of the contribution of CSCs to neovascularization should elucidate the mechanisms of cancer initiation and progression as well as establish new concepts for cancer diagnosis and treatment.We developed novel methods for enrichment and isolation of CSCs from various types of human cancers (from the brain, stomach, colon, breast, liver, lung, etc., and studied their contribution to neovascularization, invasion and metastasis.We here report and discuss the evidence for the roles of CSCs, particularly from maglignant glioma, in tumor vascularization, including production of pro-angiogenic factors, trans-differentiation into endothelial cells, and formation of non-endothelium-lined vasculogenic mimicry.In addition, the potential therapeutic significance of targeting CSCs is envisaged (This study was supported by grants from the National Basic Research Program (973 Program, No.2006CB708503) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, No.30725035).