Surviving change: the metabolic journey of hematopoietic stem cells

Latika Kohli1, Emmanuelle Passegué1

  • 1Division of Hematology/Oncology, Department of Medicine, The Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.

Trends in Cell Biology
|April 29, 2014
PubMed

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are a rare population of somatic stem cells that maintain blood production and are uniquely wired to adapt to diverse cellular fates during the lifetime of an organism. Recent studies have highlighted a central role for metabolic plasticity in facilitating cell fate transitions and in preserving HSC functionality and survival. This review summarizes our current understanding of the metabolic programs associated with HSC quiescence, self-renewal, and lineage commitment, and highlights the mechanistic underpinnings of these changing bioenergetics programs. It also discusses the therapeutic potential of targeting metabolic drivers in the context of blood malignancies.

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