By Elaine Fuchs – Rockefeller University News
Early on, every stem cell faces a fateful choice. During skin development, for instance, the embryonic epidermis begins as a single layer of epidermal progenitor cells. Their choice is to become a mature epidermal cell or switch to becoming a hair follicle cell. This so-called fate switch is governed by the transcription factor SOX9. If the progenitor cell expresses SOX9, hair follicle cells develop. If it doesn’t, epidermal cells do.
But there is a dark side to SOX9, as it’s implicated in many of the deadliest cancers worldwide, including lung, skin, head and neck, and bone cancer. In skin, some aberrant adult epidermal stem cells later turn on SOX9 despite their chosen path—and never turn it off, kickstarting a process that ultimately activates cancer genes.
