title: How One Thing Led to Another.
abstract: I started research in high school, experimenting on immunological tolerance to transplantation antigens. This led to studies of the thymus as the site of maturation of T cells, which led to the discovery, isolation, and clinical transplantation of purified hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). The induction of immune tolerance with HSCs has led to isolation of other tissue-specific stem cells for regenerative medicine. Our studies of circulating competing germline stem cells in colonial protochordates led us to document competing HSCs. In human acute myelogenous leukemia we showed that all preleukemic mutations occur in HSCs, and determined their order; the final mutations occur in a multipotent progenitor derived from the preleukemic HSC clone. With these, we discovered that CD47 is an upregulated gene in all human cancers and is a "don't eat me" signal; blocking it with antibodies leads to cancer cell phagocytosis. CD47 is the first known gene common to all cancers and is a target for cancer immunotherapy.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, and Ludwig Center for Cancer Stem Cell Research and Medicine at Stanford, Stanford, CA 94305.
authors.forename: Irving
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Weissman
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000378:metabolism; D051928:CD47 Antigen / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D006412:Hematopoietic Stem Cells / Q000276:immunology*; D006801:Humans; D007108:Immune Tolerance; D007167:Immunotherapy / Q000639:trends*; D015470:Leukemia, Myeloid, Acute / Q000276:immunology* / Q000628:therapy; D058990:Molecular Targeted Therapy; D039902:Multipotent Stem Cells / Q000502:physiology*; D009154:Mutation / Q000235:genetics; D044968:Regenerative Medicine; D013601:T-Lymphocytes / Q000276:immunology*; D014181:Transplantation Immunology
chemical_list: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D051928:CD47 Antigen
keywords: Autobiography; stem cell