Division of Stem Cells and Cancer
Prof. Andreas Trumpp
In the last decade, it has become evident that specific signaling pathways that control crucial steps during embryonic development are often inappropriately reactivated during tumorigenesis
In addition cancer cells seem to take advantage of cellular principles inherent to normal stem cells which are crucial for maintenance, repair and regenerative processes of most adult tissues such as the intestinal epithelium or the hematopoietic system.
Like immortal cancer cells normal stem cells have the capacity of life-long self-renewal. Stem cell self-renewal is a physiological mechanism that maintains a small pool of cells that are able to proliferate indefinitely (immortal stem cells), but at the same time produce a variety of differentiated cells that fulfill and maintain the function of the body.
Our research takes advantage of various mouse models in which we have altered the expression of a number of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. We use those model systems to study the molecular and cellular basis of stem cell self-renewal, the interaction of stem cells with their specialized microenvironment (stem cell niche) and the relationship between stem cells and tumorigenesis.
Prof. Andreas Trumpp also is director of HI-STEM, the Heidelberg Institute for Stem Cell Technology and Experimental Medicine. Click here for more details.
Selected Publications
Wilson A, Laurenti E, Oser GM, van der Wath RC, Blanco-Bose WE, Dunant C, Bockamp E, Liò P, MacDonald HR, Trumpp A: Hematopoietic stem cells reversibly switch from dormancy to self-renewal during homeostasis and repair. Cell 2008, 135:1118-29
Laurenti E, Varnum-Finney B, Wilson A, Knoepfler PS, MacDonald HR, Bernstein I, Eisenman RN, Trumpp A: Hematopoietic stem cell function and survival depend on c-Myc and N-Myc activity. Cell Stem Cell 2008, 3:611-24
Essers MAG, Offner S, Blanco-Bose WE, Waibler Z, Kalinke U, Duchosal MA, Trumpp A: IFNa activates dormant HSCs in vivo. Nature 2009, 458:904-8
Laurenti E., Barde I, Verp S., Offner S., Wilson A., Quenneville S., Wiznerowicz M., MacDonald H.R., Trono, D. and Trumpp A. Inducible gene and shRNA expression in resident hematopoietic stem cells in vivo. (2010). Stem Cells, Aug;28(8):1390-8
