COMMENTARIES

Colorectal cancer

Hedgehog Wnteraction in colorectal cancer

G R van den Brink¹, J C H Hardwick²

¹ Department of Experimental Internal Medicine, Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Geneva University Hospital, Geneva, Switzerland
² Department of Experimental Internal Medicine, and Department of Gastroenterology, Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr G R van den Brink
Laboratory for Experimental Internal Medicine, Academic Medical Centre, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, the Netherlands; g.r.vandenbrink@amc.uva.nl

---

The Hedgehog pathway was recently shown to antagonise constitutive activity of the Wnt pathway that drives proliferation of colorectal cancer cells. Studies in this issue of Gut refine our understanding of the underlying mechanism and provide evidence for such antagonism in colorectal cancers in vivo

---

Keywords: Hedgehog; Wnt; colon; cancer

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The mucosa of the colon is covered by a single layer of epithelial cells that is replaced once every 3–7 days. New cells are produced by a pool of progenitor cells that lie at the base of small mucosal invaginations called crypts. It has been estimated that these progenitor cells generate approximately 10 billion new cells per day in the human colon.¹ Homeostasis in such a massive process of regeneration can only be achieved if the behaviour of cells in the system is not regulated at the level of the individual cell (intrinsic). Instead, the fate of individual epithelial cells must be determined by extra cellular (extrinsic) signals that are generated at the population level. It is now becoming clear that these extrinsic signals are provided by morphogens, a class of molecules that has been identified by developmental biologists who studied patterning events during embryogenesis.² Morphogens are soluble . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Gli1, downregulated in colorectal cancers, inhibits proliferation of colon cancer cells involving Wnt signalling activation

T Akiyoshi, M Nakamura, K Koga, H Nakashima, T Yao, M Tsuneyoshi, M Tanaka, and M Katano
Gut 2006 55: 991-999. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Ohshima, R., Ohta, T., Wu, W., Koike, A., Iwatani, T., Henderson, M., Watts, C. K. W., Otsubo, T. (2007). Putative tumor suppressor EDD interacts with and up-regulates APC.. GENES CELLS 12: 1339-1345 [Abstract] [Full Text]