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Oncogenes

Determining fate

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 4, page 6 (2004)Cite this article

As tumours are thought to be maintained by tumour stem cells, the role of OCT-3/4 in maintaining the stem-cell fate of germ cells led the authors to investigate whether it might also be expressed in germ-cell tumours. In the adult male, the expression of OCT-3/4 is restricted to type A spermatogonia, but it was also found to be expressed in all 45 germ-cell tumours that were tested. The expression was particularly high in the pre-malignant cells, so it might contribute to germ-cell neoplasia from an early stage. It was not expressed in any of 182 non-germ-cell tumours.

But what effect does it actually have on tumorigenicity? The authors used several lines of engineered embryonic stem (ES) cells that expressed from 0–150% of wild-type OCT-3/4. These were injected subcutaneously into mice and the incidence of tumour formation was determined. Mice that were injected with wild-type cells developed tumours at an incidence of 83%, but this decreased to only 4.3% if OCT-3/4 was not expressed. Upregulating OCT-3/4 also increased the proportion of tumours with primitive neural and malignant-appearing tissues, further confirming that it influences cell fate.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Gidekel, S. et al. Oct-3/4 is a dose-dependent oncogenic fate determinant. Cancer Cell 4, 361–370 (2003)

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Authors
  1. Emma Greenwood
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Greenwood, E. Determining fate. Nat Rev Cancer 4, 6 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc1262

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc1262

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