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COMMENTARIES |
| Colorectal cancer |
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
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 37 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
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