Abstract
It is now recognized that tumor cells share similarities to stem cells in that they do not have a strong sense of functional identity. In the case of the skin, a mature cell that becomes stem-like no longer has the identity of a skin cell, meaning it changes shape and behaves in ways that make it not fit in with its normal skin cell neighbors. Accompanying these changes in behavior are changes in which genes are transcribed or repressed. This is why the transcriptome of cancer cells or cancer stem cells often share many similarities with the transcriptome of embryonic or adult stem cells.
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Nguyen, D.H. (2016). Cellular Plasticity, Cancer Stem Cells, and Cells-of-Origin. In: Systems Biology of Tumor Physiology. SpringerBriefs in Cancer Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25601-6_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25601-6_2
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