Echoes of the embryo: using the developmental biology toolkit to study cancer

The hallmark of embryonic development is regulation - the tendency for cells to find their way into organized and 'well behaved' structures - whereas cancer is characterized by dysregulation and disorder. At face value, cancer biology and developmental biology would thus seem to have littl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Disease models & mechanisms 2016-02, Vol.9 (2), p.105-114
Main Authors: Aiello, Nicole M, Stanger, Ben Z
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Antineoplastic Agents - therapeutic use
Biomarkers, Tumor
Cancer
Carcinogenesis
Developmental biology
Embryology
Embryonic Development
Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition
Fibroblasts
Gene expression
Growth factors
Humans
Intravital imaging
Kinases
Ligands
Lineage tracing
Low density lipoprotein receptors
Mutation
Neoplasms - drug therapy
Neoplasms - genetics
Neoplasms - pathology
Pancreas
Proteins
Reprogramming
Review
Signal transduction
Skin cancer
Stem cells
Transcription factors
Tumorigenesis
Tumors
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Summary:The hallmark of embryonic development is regulation - the tendency for cells to find their way into organized and 'well behaved' structures - whereas cancer is characterized by dysregulation and disorder. At face value, cancer biology and developmental biology would thus seem to have little to do with each other. But if one looks beneath the surface, embryos and cancers share a number of cellular and molecular features. Embryos arise from a single cell and undergo rapid growth involving cell migration and cell-cell interactions: features that are also seen in the context of cancer. Consequently, many of the experimental tools that have been used to study embryogenesis for over a century are well-suited to studying cancer. This article will review the similarities between embryogenesis and cancer progression and discuss how some of the concepts and techniques used to understand embryos are now being adapted to provide insight into tumorigenesis, from the origins of cancer cells to metastasis.
ISSN:1754-8403
1754-8411
1754-8411
1754-8403
DOI:10.1242/dmm.023184