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. 2009 May;1(2):88-91.
doi: 10.1002/emmm.200900019.

Awaking stem cells from dormancy: growing old and fighting cancer

Andrea Viale  1 , Pier G Pelicci
Affiliations

Awaking stem cells from dormancy: growing old and fighting cancer

Andrea Viale et al. EMBO Mol Med. 2009 May.

Abstract

It is generally accepted that a distinguishing property of stem cells (SCs), as compared to their more differentiated progenitors, is that of infrequent division, often referred to as 'quiescence'. As regards hematopoietic stem cells (HSC), their resistance to antiproliferative drugs supports this notion. Maintenance of quiescence is thought to be critical for the preservation of HSCs' function.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Hierarchical model of regulation of dormant and activated HSCs
A dormant HSC (D) undergoes asymmetric division and generates one daughter cell which re-enters into dormancy and one daughter cell which actively proliferates (A1-A ≫ 5). Both dormant and activated HSCs progressively lose the self-renewal potential during proliferation (loss of self-renewal occurs after five divisions as experimentally determined). While entry into cell cycle is assumed to occur infrequently under steady-state condition, it occurs simultaneously for almost all cells after tissue injury or cumulatively during life-span.
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