What is it about?
Reduced oxygen supply (hypoxia) is a common feature of solid tumors. Such hypoxic regions have cells, which are chemo and radio resistant and exhibit stem cell like characteristics. This study elucidates the molecular basis of regulation of stemness of brain tumor cells by hypoxia.
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Why is it important?
Our work has shown that hypoxia is important for regulation of pluripotency in brain tumor cells. We report for the first time that Tet 1 and 3 enzymes increase in hypoxic conditions and actively demethylate Oct4 and Nanog genes. The Oct4 and Naong are the key pluripotency genes, required for stem cell maintenance. Hence this study explains the mechanism of pluripotent stem cell maintenance in hypoxic cancer cells.
Perspectives
This article is interesting and more of such studies are required to understand how tumor cells are regulated so that they can be targeted effectively. As of now, brain tumor finds a dismal prognosis. I hope that this work adds to the existing knowledge on tumor hypoxia and helps in improving the treatment strategies
Shivani Mittal
University of Delhi
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Hypoxia-Mediated Epigenetic Regulation of Stemness in Brain Tumor Cells, Stem Cells, April 2017, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/stem.2621.
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