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The article focuses on the relationship between stem cell aging and the development of precancerous conditions. Topics discussed include the role of specific mutations and epigenetic changes in initiating precancerous stem cell expansion, the impact of chronic inflammation on stem cell aging, and the progression of precancer stem cells into self-renewing malignant stem cells.

The necrotic core has long been a hallmark of the vulnerable atherosclerotic plaque. Although apoptotic cells are cleared quickly in almost all other tissue beds, their removal appears to be significantly impaired in the diseased blood vessel. Emerging evidence indicates that this phenomenon is caused by a defect in efferocytosis, the process by which apoptotic tissue is recognized for engulfment by phagocytic cells such as macrophages. Genetic and experimental data suggest that efferocytosis is impaired during atherogenesis caused by dysregulation of so-called eat me ligands, which govern the edibility of cells undergoing programmed cell death. The following is a summary of recent data indicating that efferocytosis is a major unappreciated driver of lesion expansion but also a reversible defect that can potentially be targeted as a means to prevent plaque progression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is obvious that natural selection operates at the level of individuals and collections of individuals. Nearly two decades ago we showed that in multi-individual colonies of protochordate colonial tunicates sharing a blood circulation, there exists an exchange of somatic stem cells and germline stem cells, resulting in somatic chimeras and stem cell competitions for gonadal niches. Stem cells are unlike other cells in the body in that they alone self-renew, so that they form clones that are perpetuated for the life of the organism. Stem cell competitions have allowed the emergence of competitive somatic and germline stem cell clones. Highly successful germline stem cells usually outcompete less successful competitors both in the gonads of the genotype partner from which they arise and in the gonads of the natural parabiotic partners. Therefore, natural selection also operates at the level of germline stem cell clones. In the colonial tunicate Botryllus schlosseri the formation of natural parabionts is prevented by a single-locus highly polymorphic histocompatibility gene called Botryllus histocompatibility factor. This limits germline stem cell predation to kin, as the locus has hundreds of alleles. We show that in mice germline stem cells compete for gonad niches, and in mice and humans, blood-forming stem cells also compete for bone marrow niches. We show that the clonal progression from blood-forming stem cells to acute leukemias by successive genetic and epigenetic events in blood stem cells also involves competition and selection between clones and propose that this is a general theme in cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hematopoietic progenitor cell replacement therapy remains a surprisingly unrefined process. In general, unmanipulated bone marrow or mobilized peripheral blood (MPB) grafts which carry potentially harmful passenger cells are administered after treating recipients with high-dose chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy to eradicate malignant disease, eliminate immunologic barriers to allogeneic cell engraftment, and to ‘make space’ for rare donor stem cells within the stem cell niche. The sequalae of such treatments are substantial, including direct organ toxicity and nonspecific inflammation that contribute to the development of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and poor immune reconstitution. Passenger tumor cells that contaminate autologous hematopoietic grafts may contribute to relapse post-transplant. Use of antibodies to rid grafts of unwanted cell populations, and to eliminate or minimize the need for nonspecifically cytotoxic therapies used to condition transplant recipients, will dramatically improve the safety profile of allogeneic and gene-modified autologous hematopoietic stem cell therapies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple lines of investigation have demonstrated that the immune system plays an important role in preventing tumor initiation and controlling tumor growth. Accordingly, many cancers have evolved diverse mechanisms to evade such monitoring. While multiple immune cell types mediate tumor surveillance, recent evidence demonstrates that macrophages, and other phagocytic cells, play a key role in regulating tumor growth through phagocytic clearance. In this review we highlight the role of tumor immune evasion through the inhibition of phagocytosis, specifically through the CD47–signal-regulatory protein-α pathway, and discuss how targeting this pathway might lead to more effective cancer immunotherapies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Double-strand break repair is required for neural development, and brain cells contain somatic genomic variations. Now, Wei et al. demonstrate that neural stem and progenitor cells undergo very frequent DNA breaks in a very restricted set of genes involved in neural cell adhesion and synapse function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cells of the vertebrate immune system are continuously regenerated by division of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) into differentiated effector cells. Classically, HSCs were thought to reside primarily in the bone marrow niche where they produced mature progeny that migrated from the marrow to repopulate the peripheral immune system. However, emerging evidence has established that hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) are themselves mobile and able to repopulate ectopic niches and contribute more directly to inflammatory responses in the periphery. How the HSPCs remain immune to destruction in a toxic inflammatory milieu is unknown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Dr. Irving Weissman was the honored E. Donnall Thomas lecturer at the Tandem BMT Meetings, held on February 10, 2007, at Keystone, Colorado. Dr. Weissman has been a major player, and has provided us with enormous insight into many areas of biology, dating back to his high school days in Montana. He led an enormously productive career at Stanford University where he has taught us many lessons involving our understanding of lymphocyte homing, stem cell biology, both of the hematopoietic system and other types of stem cells, and also now, about cancer stem cells. Dr. Weissman has made enormous contributions to this burgeoning field that has provided us new insights and new opportunities for treatment strategies. In addition to a very productive laboratory career, he is also currently the director of both the Stem Cell Institute, as well as the Cancer Center at Stanford University. The following text is a modified transcribed version of the presentation made by Dr. Weissman. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are cells that drive tumorigenesis, as well as giving rise to a large population of differentiated progeny that make up the bulk of the tumor, but that lack tumorigenic potential. CSCs have been identified in a variety of human tumors, as assayed by their ability to initiate tumor growth in immunocompromised mice. Further characterization studies have demonstrated that gene expression profiles in breast cancer correlate with patient prognosis, and brain CSCs are specifically resistant to radiation through DNA damage repair. In addition, specific signaling pathways play a functional role in CSC self renewal and/or differentiation, and early studies indicate that CSCs are associated with a microenvironmental niche. Thus the biological properties of CSCs are just beginning to be revealed, and the continuation of these studies should lead to the development of CSC-targeted therapies for cancer treatment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Direct clonal analysis of tissue and organ maturation in vivo is a critical step in the interpretation of in vitro cell precursor-progeny relationships. We have developed a method to analyze clonal progenitor contributions in vivo using ES cells stably expressing separate fluorescent proteins and placed into normal blastocysts to form tetrachimeras. Here we applied this method to the analysis of embryonic yolk sac blood islands. In most vertebrates, yolk sac blood islands are the initial sites of appearance of hematopoietic and endothelial cells. It has been proposed that these lineages arise from a common clonal progenitor, the hemangioblast, but this hypothesis has not been tested directly in physiological development in vivo. Our analysis shows that each island has contributions from multiple progenitors. Moreover, contribution by individual hemangioblast progenitors to both endothelial and hematopoietic lineages within an island, if it happens at all, is an infrequent event. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Telomerase is critical for the protection of germ line and stem cell chromosomes from fatal shortening during replication. In most organisms, telomerase activity is suppressed in progressively committed cells and falls to basal rates in terminally differentiated lineages. The colonial ascidian Botryllus schlosseri propagates asexually and sexually, presumably from pools of stem cells that self-renew throughout the 2- to 5-year colony life span. Asexual budding takes place continuously from the parental body wall. When the colony reaches a critical size, sexual reproduction commences with the generation of gonads. Here, we establish the existence of 6–15 kb telomeres on the ends of Botryllus chromosomes. We develop a real-time quantitative PCR telomeric repeat amplification protocol (TRAP) assay that reliably detects 0.2–100 TPG units in cells and tissues. We find highest levels of enzymatic activity in the gonads, developing embryos, and tissues containing the earliest asexual buds. Telomerase activity appears to be suppressed in later buds during organogenesis and falls to basal rates in mature zooids. We postulate that this pattern reflects maximum telomere restoration in somatic stem cells of early buds and suppression of telomerase activity in progenitors and terminally differentiated cells, indicative of an alternate role for stem cells as repeated body regenerators in colonial life histories. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Recent years have seen much excitement over the possibility that adult mammalian stem cells may be capable of differentiating across tissue lineage boundaries, and as such may represent novel, accessible, and very versatile effectors of therapeutic tissue regeneration. Yet studies proposing such “plasticity” of adult somatic stem cells remain controversial, and in general, existing evidence suggests that in vivo such unexpected transformations are exceedingly rare and in some cases can be accounted for by equally unexpected alternative explanations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Colonial organisms provide a unique experimental system for stem cell biology. The colonial Urochordate Botryllus schlosseri reproduces sexually as well as by continuous asexual budding. Adjacent colonies with a shared histocompatibility allele undergo vascular fusion and establish a common blood circulation, performing natural transplantation. Fused colonies become chimeras, often with complete somatic replacement of the host cell genotype by the fused parabiont. We attempted to establish a radioprotection assay for the somatic stem cells that induce long-term chimerism in Botryllus. We demonstrate over a range of radiation doses that neither autologous nor allogeneic cell transplantation enhances survival of host colonies. This suggests that high mitotic index associated with continuous asexual development leads to radiosensitivity of organs and structures essential to survival during engraftment. We observe that radiation induces uncontrolled epithelial cell proliferation in abnormally terminated buds, suggesting that stem cells are not required for the initial stages of bud development. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The colonial protochordate, Botryllus schlosseri, undergoes a natural transplantation reaction which is controlled by a single, highly polymorphic locus called the Fu/HC. We are using map-based cloning to identify Fu/HC gene(s), and have currently delineated their location to an approximately 1-cM region of the B. schlosseri genome. The Fu/HC physical map currently consists of 85 sequence-tagged sites mapped on a minimum tiling path of 800 kb which consists of five contigs, with four gaps remaining to be crossed, and is estimated to be 75% completed. Approximately half this region has been sequenced throughout the locus, allowing the first analysis of a metazoan histocompatibility locus outside of vertebrates. This has resulted in the identification of 18 predicted genes, a number of which have been found to be expressed. Several of these genes are well conserved among the chordates; however, none of the predicted or expressed genes are linked within the genome of any organism in the databases. In addition, the Fu/HC is one of the most polymorphic loci ever described, and physical mapping has revealed that the locus is quite dynamic, and includes features such as hotspots of recombination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of chimeric colonies following allogeneic contact between benthic invertebrates may strongly affect colony fitness. Here we show that, in a field population of the colonial ascidian Botryllus schlosseri in Monterey Bay, California, more than 20% of all colonies occur in allogeneic contact with conspecifics. We experimentally assessed the effects of allogeneic contact on the following life-history traits under natural field conditions: growth, age and size at first reproduction, and egg production (fecundity). When compared with isolated colonies, and in some cohorts also with colonies that rejected allogeneic neighbors, colonies that fused with neighbors incurred reduced fitness in terms of most life-history traits measured. We propose that one of the benefits of precise allorecognition is that, in fused colonies, it limits the unit of selection to chimeric individuals composed of closely related kin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For me the search for hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) actually started with the discovery by Till, McCulloch, and colleagues (1-3) that bone marrow contained single cells that could give rise to myeloerythoid colonies in the spleen, and sometimes these colonies contained cells that made more spleen colonies as well as radioprotected and reconstituted lethally irradiated mice (3). But in retrospect, it should have started with the remarkable observation of Ray Owen in 1945 that bovine fraternal twins sharing a single placenta and blood circulation retained production of blood cells genetically defined to be from both throughout their life (4). It could be argued that this was the experiment that began both modern experimental hematology as well as modern cellular immunology. The Till, McCulloch, Wu, Becker, and Simonovitch experiments were elegant demonstrations that single-genetically marked cells existed (random DNA breaks and translocations induced by sublethal irradiation of the donor bone marrow) that could both self-renew and differentiate (2,5). But these experiments did not put the pure cells in the hands of scientists, and so most of their functions for the next 35 years were implied rather than directly analyzed. Just as genetics if the complement to biochemistry (when one considers genes and gene products), cell marking is the complement to cell purification in the fields of developmental and cellular biology. The first attempts at such cellular purification came from the 'school' of Till & McCulloch (6,7), and independently the school of Van Bekkum in the Netherlands (8). Not what was lacking in those experiments and at that time were both a comprehensive approach that would take into account the clonal activity of stem cells in both self-renewal and differentiation to all blood cell outcomes, and the tools with which one could separate what turned out to be an extremely rare... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the role of telomerase in hematopoietic system. Telomere shortening and senescence in the absence of telomerase; Telomere shortening and senescence in the presence of telomerase; Effect of over-expression of telomerase reverse transcriptase on the replicative capacity of hematopoietic stem cells during transplantation.

Analyzes the functional differences in cells of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) phenotype that do or do not express the receptor tyrosine kinase Flk-2. Heterogenous expression of Flk-2 on the HSC population; Definition by the receptor tyrosine kinases of a pathway of HSC differentiation; Long-term reconstitution ability of Flk-2[sup +] mouse fetal liver HSCs.

Multipotent stem cells are clonal cells that self-renew as well as differentiate to regenerate adult tissues. Whereas stem cells and their fates are known by unique genetic marker studies, the fate and function of these cells are best studied by their prospective isolation. This review is about the properties of various highly purified tissue-specific multipotent stem cells and purified oligolineage progenitors. We contend that unless the stem or progenitor cells in question have been purified to near homogeneity, one cannot know whether their generation of expected (or unexpected) progeny is a property of a known cell type. It is interesting that in the hematopoietic system the only long-term self-renewing cells in the stem and progenitors pool are the hematopoietic stem cells. This fact is discussed in the context of normal and leukemic hematopoiesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the issues of tolerance induction and immune reconstitution after transplantation of highly purified major histocompatibility complex-disparate hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) in mice. Effects of donated immune system arising from HSC grafts as the result of de novo hematopoiesis; Difference between HSC-transplanted mice and bone marrow chimeras.

Presents a study which separated and identified the cells expressing acute myelogenous leukemia 1 (AML1)/ETO by phenotype and function. Chromosomal abnormality in acute myelogenous leukemia; Cell purification by triple-sorting by using a five-color flow cytometer; Results and discussion.

Addresses the barriers and opportunities to the application of stem and progenitor cell transplantation. Experiments that proved the existence of stem cells; Biology of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells; Potential neurological disease targets for stem cell transplantation.

Discusses the history and advances in stem cells research. Examination of hematopoietic stem cells; Regeneration of the hematolymphoid system; Progeny of cell divisions; Development processes associated with stem and progenitor cells.

Examines a study conducted on the transplantation of a single Mendelian locus (Fu/HC) and incompatible Zooids in Botryllus scholosseri. Information on the Fu/HC-based allorecognition system; How the spatial organization of the cellular elements responsible for Fu/HC-based allo-recognition was better understood; Results of the study.

Presents information on a study which showed that cyclophilin C-associated protein (CyCAP) is a widely expressed secreted glycoprotein that modulates the host response to endotoxin. Materials and methods; Results and discussion.

Presents a study which identified clonogenic common lymphoid progenitors (CLP) in mouse bone marrow. Outline of the contents of adult bone marrow; What constitutes a space in the hematopoietic lineage maps; Examination of whether CLPs exist in sites of early lymphopoiesis at a clonal level; Identification of the Lin-IL-7R+Thy-1.1-Sca-1...c-Kit... population.

Suggests that the enforced express of Bcl-2 in monocytes rescues macrophages and partially reserves osteopetrosis in op/op mice according to a study. What osteopetrotic mice lack; Type of mice prepared for study; Findings of the study; Indepth look at study.

Discusses the internal mechanisms that trigger developmental switches in the immune system. Change in state of cells from one quantal stage to another; Role of lymphoid organs in morphological changes during an immune response; Lymphocyte homing receptors; Hematopoietic stem cells; Heterogeneity of stem cells during ontogeny.

Discloses that both somatic cell and germ-line parasitism are a common occurrence in fused chimeras of the colonial tunicate, Botryllus schlosseri. Laboratory colony fusions of somatic chimerism; Germ line parasitism; Field chimeras; Analysis of adjacent unfused field colonies.

Presents the life histories of the colonial ascidian Botryllus schlosseri growing under field conditions in Monterey Bay, California. Morphology and growth; Sexual reproduction; Longevity and survivorship.

Self-renewal pathways crucial for maintaining stem cells are deregulated in cancer, raising the spectre that cancer therapies targeting such pathways might also ablate normal stem cells. As report in a recent Nature paper, this may not be the case for the tumor suppressor protein Pten, which drives the self-renewal of normal hematopoietic stem cells and the formation of leukemia cells through different mechanisms. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses the methods in producing pluripotent stem-cell lines for understanding and treating diseases. One method involves cell removal from its stages of developments. The embryonic stem cells produced in these method would have the same gene as the embryo. The production of such stem-cell lines enables the study of the cellular and genetic bases of disease development. Another method is the used of nuclear transfer technique. This technique blocks the expression of cdx2 gene until the blastocyst stage of the cell.

Leukemia stem cells are defined as transformed hematopoietic stem cells or committed progenitor cells that have amplified or acquired the stem cell capacity for self-renewal, albeit in a poorly regulated fashion. In this issue of Cancer Cell, Huntly and colleagues report a striking difference in the ability of two leukemia-associated fusion proteins, MOZ-TIF2 and BCR-ABL, to transform myeloid progenitor populations. This rigorous study supports the idea of a hierarchy among leukemia-associated protooncogenes for their ability to endow committed myeloid progenitors with the self-renewal capacity driving leukemic stem cell propagation, and sheds new light on the pathogenesis of chronic and acute myelogenous leukemias. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Examines the role of the bcl-2 gene in the regulation of programmed cell death in mammalian cells. Expression of the human bcl-2 gene in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans reducing the number of programmed cell deaths; Similar mechanisms of programmed cell death controlled by bcl-2 in humans and nematodes; More.

The use of colony-stimulating factor-1 receptor (CSF1R) inhibitors has been widely explored as a strategy for cancer immunotherapy due to their robust depletion of tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs). While CSF1R blockade effectively eliminates TAMs from the solid tumor microenvironment, its clinical efficacy is limited. Here, we use an inducible CSF1R knockout model to investigate the persistence of tumor progression in the absence of TAMs. We find increased frequencies of granulocytic myeloid-derived suppressor cells (G-MDSCs) in the bone marrow, throughout circulation, and in the tumor following CSF1R deletion and loss of TAMs. We find that G-MDSCs are capable of suppressing macrophage phagocytosis, and the elimination of G-MDSCs through CXCR2 inhibition increases macrophage capacity for tumor cell clearance. Further, we find that combination therapy of CXCR2 inhibition and CD47 blockade synergize to elicit a significant anti-tumor response. These findings reveal G-MDSCs as key drivers of tumor immunosuppression and demonstrate their inhibition as a potent strategy to increase macrophage phagocytosis and enhance the anti-tumor efficacy of CD47 blockade in B16-F10 melanoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the paper "Cytological demonstration of the clonal nature of spleen colonies derived from transplanted mouse marrow cells" by A. Becker and colleagues which appeared in the February 2, 1963 issue of "Nature." Topics discussed include the entry of hematopoietic progenitors or stem cells into the circulation of single placenta-sharing fraternal calf twins, immunity as a result of postnatal transplantation of blood cells, and the in vivo clonal lineage tracing of cells.

The article celebrates the life and work of E. Donnall Thomas, the Emeritus Director of the Clinical Research Division of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington who died on October 20, 2012.

In this issue of Cancer Cell, Goardon et al. revise earlier conclusions regarding acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) stem cells by demonstrating that in the majority of patients, they reside in two hierarchically related populations most similar to normal hematopoietic progenitors. These findings have implications for therapeutic targeting of these cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on a study providing a powerful evidence that yolk sac hematopoiesis does supply adult-forming cells as well. It is known that the yolk sac serves only the embryo, and that an independent origin of blood-forming stem cells begin in the region of the developing fetus known as the aorta-gonad-mesonephros (AGM). It was found that adult blood-forming cells in the AGM regions at least partly originated from Runx1-positive progenitors in the yolk sac.

Human neuronal loss occurs through different cellular mechanisms, mainly studied in vitro. Here, we characterized neuronal death in B. schlosseri, a marine colonial tunicate that shares substantial genomic homology with mammals and has a life history in which controlled neurodegeneration happens simultaneously in the brains of adult zooids during a cyclical phase named takeover. Using an ultrastructural and transcriptomic approach, we described neuronal death forms in adult zooids before and during the takeover phase while comparing adult zooids in takeover with their buds where brains are refining their structure. At takeover, we found in neurons clear morphologic signs of apoptosis (i.e., chromatin condensation, lobed nuclei), necrosis (swollen cytoplasm) and autophagy (autophagosomes, autolysosomes and degradative multilamellar bodies). These results were confirmed by transcriptomic analyses that highlighted the specific genes involved in these cell death pathways. Moreover, the presence of tubulovesicular structures in the brain medulla alongside the over-expression of prion disease genes in late cycle suggested a cell-to-cell, prion-like propagation recalling the conformational disorders typical of some human neurodegenerative diseases. We suggest that improved understanding of how neuronal alterations are regulated in the repeated degeneration–regeneration program of B. schlosseri may yield mechanistic insights relevant to the study of human neurodegenerative diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fibrotic diseases are not well-understood. They represent a number of different diseases that are characterized by the development of severe organ fibrosis without any obvious cause, such as the devastating diseases idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and scleroderma. These diseases have a poor prognosis comparable with endstage cancer and are uncurable. Given the phenotypic differences, it was assumed that the different fibrotic diseases also have different pathomechanisms. Here, we demonstrate that many endstage fibrotic diseases, including IPF; scleroderma; myelofibrosis; kidney-, pancreas-, and heart-fibrosis; and nonalcoholic steatohepatosis converge in the activation of the AP1 transcription factor c-JUN in the pathologic fibroblasts. Expression of the related AP1 transcription factor FRA2 was restricted to pulmonary artery hypertension. Induction of c-Jun in mice was sufficient to induce severe fibrosis in multiple organs and steatohepatosis, which was dependent on sustained c-Jun expression. Single cell mass cytometry revealed that c-Jun activates multiple signaling pathways in mice, including pAkt and CD47, which were also induced in human disease. αCD47 antibody treatment and VEGF or PI3K inhibition reversed various organ c-Jun-mediated fibroses in vivo. These data suggest that c-JUN is a central molecular mediator of most fibrotic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Specificity ultimately depends on highly polymorphic genes, with populations often containing hundreds of alleles. Emergence and maintenance of this extraordinary polymorphism are unresolved issues in population genetics. Contact between adjacent colonies initiates an allorecognition reaction at juxtaposed extracorporeal blood vessels, resulting in either vascular fusion, forming a natural parabiosis, or in rejection, which prevents blood transfer between the two individuals. During positional cloning of the Fu/HC, we created F2 mapping populations using five independently isolated alleles.

A response from researcher Irving L. Weissman to several letters to the editor about his article on therapeutic cloning in the May 16, 2002 issue is presented.

The article presents the author's comments on stem cell research. According to the author, stem cells have the unique capacity to generate differentiated cells and are present in all stages of development. The inner cell mass in the blastula have some pluripotent stem cells that give rise to all types of somatic and germ-line cells.

Comments on the future of human embryonic stem cell (ESC) research in the United States. Hurdles to the approval of ESC research in government-funded entities; Importance of ESC research to medicine, science and translational research; Possible consequences of the government's failure to make ESC research available in the country.

Although tumor blood vessels have been a major therapeutic target for cancer chemotherapy, little is known regarding the stepwise development of the tumor microenvironment. Here, we use a multicolor Cre-dependent marker system to trace clonality within the tumor microenvironment to show that tumor blood vessels follow a pattern of dynamic clonal evolution. In an advanced melanoma tumor microenvironment, the vast majority of tumor vasculature clones are derived from a common precursor. Quantitative lineage analysis reveals founder clones diminish in frequency and are replaced by subclones as tumors evolve. These tumor-specific blood vessels are characterized by a developmental switch to a more invasive and immunologically silent phenotype. Gene expression profiling and pathway analysis reveals selection for traits promoting upregulation of alternative angiogenic programs such as unregulated HGF-MET signaling and enhanced autocrine signaling through VEGF and PDGF. Furthermore, we show a developmental switch in the expression of functionally significant primary lymphocyte adhesion molecules on tumor endothelium, such as the loss in expression of the mucosal addressin MAdCAM-1, whose counter receptor a4β7 on lymphocytes controls lymphocyte homing. Changes in adhesive properties on tumor endothelial subclones are accompanied by decreases in expression of lymphocyte chemokines CXCL16, CXCL13, CXCL12, CXCL9, CXCL10, and CCL19. These evolutionary patterns in the expressed genetic program within tumor endothelium will have both a quantitative and functional impact on lymphocyte distribution that may well influence tumor immune function and underlie escape mechanisms from current antiangiogenic pharmacotherapies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial discusses the treatment of DiGeorge syndrome and how the information gleaned from years of research on rodents can translate into effective medical treatment for this disease. The author presents a description of DiGeorge syndrome and an explanation of T-cell development. The article focuses on how the results of this research force reconsideration as to the existence or need of a thymus beyond puberty. Thymus transplantation in children can rescue children with the DiGeorge syndrome.

Colonial tunicates are marine organisms that possess multiple brains simultaneously during their colonial phase. While the cyclical processes of neurogenesis and neurodegeneration characterizing their life cycle have been documented previously, the cellular and molecular changes associated with such processes and their relationship with variation in brain morphology and individual (zooid) behavior throughout adult life remains unknown. Here, we introduce Botryllus schlosseri as an invertebrate model for neurogenesis, neural degeneration, and evolutionary neuroscience. Our analysis reveals that during the weekly colony budding (i.e., asexual reproduction), prior to programmed cell death and removal by phagocytes, decreases in the number of neurons in the adult brain are associated with reduced behavioral response and significant change in the expression of 73 mammalian homologous genes associated with neurodegenerative disease. Similarly, when comparing young colonies (1 to 2 y of age) to those reared in a laboratory for ~20 y, we found that older colonies contained significantly fewer neurons and exhibited reduced behavioral response alongside changes in the expression of 148 such genes (35 of which were differentially expressed across both timescales). The existence of two distinct yet apparently related neurodegenerative pathways represents a novel platform to study the gene products governing the relationship between aging, neural regeneration and degeneration, and loss of nervous system function. Indeed, as a member of an evolutionary clade considered to be a sister group of vertebrates, this organism may be a fundamental resource in understanding how evolution has shaped these processes across phylogeny and obtaining mechanistic insight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]