YAP与干细胞及肿瘤

Relationship between YAP and stem cells and tumors

YAP蛋白作为Hippo信号通路中关键成分,在控制生物器官发育和调控细胞生长中起着十分重要的作用。鉴于YAP蛋白的促细胞生长功能以及过表达YAP或YAP上游调控基因失活将引发肿瘤,YAP因此被认为是原癌蛋白。最新的研究表明YAP在维持干细胞特性、抑制干细胞分化及促进成体细胞重编程中也起着十分重要的作用。可见YAP在干细胞和肿瘤细胞中都扮演着重要角色。因此更好地了解和研究YAP蛋白及其信号通路有助于更好地理解干细胞与肿瘤的关系,有助于干细胞治疗的安全应用以及特异性靶向肿瘤治疗药物的开发。

YAP is a key protein in Hippo signalling pathway and plays a critical role in organ size regulation and cells growth regulation.YAP was termed as an oncoprotein since YAP was highly expressed in cancer cells,and lose of upstream negative regulation genes of YAP would induce tumors.Recent work have showed that YAP also plays critical roles in stem cells maintenance,inhibition of differentiation of stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells reprogramming.So YAP plays key roles both in stem cells and tumor cells.More studies about YAP would be helpful to understand the connection between stem cells and tumors,which enable researchers to apply stem cells therapy safely and design more specific tumor targeting drugs.