Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 30, 2025

Pre-Conditioning the Airways of Mice with Bleomycin Increases the Efficiency of Orthotopic Lung Cancer Cell Engraftment
Published on: June 28, 2018
Lung Cancer Cell of Origin: Controversy and Clinical Translational Implications
Jihan K Osborne1,2,3, John D Minna1,4,2,3
1Department of Pharmacology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas.
Abstract:
Identifying the cell(s) of origin for lung cancer including detecting their expansion during "field cancerization" and understanding how to therapeutically target them for beneficial chemoprevention is an urgent need. In this issue of Cancer Research, Yin and colleagues provide new and potentially controversial information to this question using Gprc5a knockout genetically engineered mouse models of lung adenocarcinoma. Prior research identified several different cell types including resident lung stem/progenitor such as alveolar type II cells as well as terminally differentiated cells as candidates for the cancer-initiating cell. Yin and colleagues provide new information that the cancer-initiating cell in this model is the bronchioalveolar stem cell. See related article by Yin et al., p. 1025.
Related Concept Videos
What is Cancer?
Although people have known about cancer for centuries, it was only in 1761 that Giovanni Morgagni of Padua performed a detailed autopsy of...
Cancers Originate from Somatic Mutations in a Single Cell
Cancer-Critical Genes I: Proto-oncogenes
When the function of certain critical genes, especially those involved in cell cycle regulation and cell growth signaling cascades, gets disrupted, it upsets the cell cycle progression. Such cells with unchecked cell cycles start proliferating uncontrollably and eventually develop into tumors.
Such genes that act...
Mouse Models of Cancer Study
The development of transgenic, knockout, and knock-in mice has led to an exponential increase in their use as model organisms in research,...
Cancer-Critical Genes II: Tumor Suppressor Genes
When the function of certain critical genes, especially those involved in cell cycle regulation and cell growth signaling cascades, gets disrupted, it upsets the cell cycle progression. Such cells with unchecked cell cycles start proliferating uncontrollably and eventually develop into tumors.
Such genes that act...
Adaptive Mechanisms in Cancer Cells
Some of the advantages that cancer cells have on normal cells include - enhanced ability to divide without terminally differentiating, induce new blood vessel formation,...

