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Comment
. 2015 Aug 14:4:e10054.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.10054.

Change isn't always better

Heather Schofield  1 , Marina Pasca di Magliano  2
Affiliations
Comment

Change isn't always better

Heather Schofield et al. Elife. .

Abstract

Maintaining the identity of acinar cells in the pancreas could help to prevent the development of pancreatic cancer.

Keywords: developmental biology; differentiation; human; human biology; medicine; mouse; pancreatic cancer; pancreatitis; stem cells.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests:The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Preventing acinar cells differentiating to duct-like cells may help to prevent the development of pancreatic cancer.
In the figure, the cell nuclei are colour-coded to indicate which genes are expressed. Acinar cells in the pancreas (left) express the differentiation factors PTF1A, Mist1 and Nr5a2 (blue). Krah et al. show that loss of PTF1A causes acinar de-differentiation in a process known as acinar-to-ductal metaplasia (ADM; centre). In the presence of oncogenic Kras, ADM leads to the formation of precancerous lesions (right) and, in time, cancer. Other factors have also been shown to be important in regulating the balance between cell differentiation and cancer: Mist1 and Nr5a2, expressed in normal acinar cells, protect from transformation. Conversely, factors that control ductal fate, including Sox9 and Pdx1, can push acinar cells toward a ductal state and accelerate the rate at which cancerous cells develop (red arrows; Kopp et al., 2012; Miyatsuka et al., 2006).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

References

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