Sca1+ pituitary adenoma cells

The role of tumor stem cells in benign tumors such as pituitary adenomas remains unclear. Donangelo and colleagues investigated whether the cells within pituitary adenomas that spontaneously develop in Rb+/− mice are hierarchically distributed with a subset being responsible for tumor growth. They find that Sca1+ cells derived from benign pituitary tumors exhibit an undifferentiated expression profile and tumor-proliferative advantages, and they propose that these cells could represent putative pituitary tumor stem/progenitor cells.

Read the full article at Donangelo et al. (2014) Endocrine-Related Cancer 21 203–216. http://dx.doi.org/10.1530/ERC-13-0229