title: Tumoral reprogramming: Plasticity takes a walk on the wild side.
abstract: Cellular plasticity is the capacity that cells have to change their fate and adopt a new identity. Plasticity is essential for normal development and for tissue regeneration and, in an experimental setting, for the induction of pluripotency. All these processes involve a reprogramming of the cellular identity, mediated by signals from the environment and/or by internal changes at the transcriptional and epigenetic levels. Tumorigenesis is a process in which normal cells acquire a new malignant identity and give rise to a clonal aberrant population. This is only possible if the initiating cell has the necessary plasticity to undergo such changes, and if the oncogenic event(s) initiating cancer has the essential reprogramming capacity so as to be able to lead a change in cellular identity. The molecular mechanisms underlying tumoral reprogramming are the pathological counterparts of the normal processes regulating developmental plasticity or experimentally-induced reprogramming. In this review we will first revise the main features of non-pathological examples of reprogramming, and then we will describe the parallelisms with tumoral reprogramming, and we will also delineate how the precise knowledge of the reprogramming mechanisms offers the potential for the development of new therapeutical interventions. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Stress as a fundamental theme in cell plasticity.
authors.affiliation: Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa, CSIC/Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, c/Nicolás Cabrera, nº 1, Campus de Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Campos-Sánchez
authors.affiliation: Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa, CSIC/Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, c/Nicolás Cabrera, nº 1, Campus de Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain. Electronic address: cesar.cobaleda@csic.es.
authors.forename: César
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cobaleda
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D054337:Cell Dedifferentiation / Q000502:physiology*; D065150:Cellular Reprogramming / Q000235:genetics; D048788:Growth and Development / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D057026:Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells / Q000502:physiology; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics / Q000473:pathology*; D014411:Neoplastic Stem Cells / Q000502:physiology; D012038:Regeneration / Q000235:genetics
keywords: Cancer reprogramming; Cancer stem cells; Induced pluripotency; Plasticity; iPSCs