Nature Communications (Mar 2016)

Bcl-2 is a critical mediator of intestinal transformation

  • Maartje van der Heijden,
  • Cheryl D. Zimberlin,
  • Anna M. Nicholson,
  • Selcuk Colak,
  • Richard Kemp,
  • Sybren L. Meijer,
  • Jan Paul Medema,
  • Florian R. Greten,
  • Marnix Jansen,
  • Douglas J. Winton,
  • Louis Vermeulen

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10916
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 1
pp. 1 – 11

Abstract

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The anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 is selectively expressed in intestinal stem cells (ISCs). Here, the authors show that, in intestinal stem cells, Bcl-2 alleviates apoptotic priming induced by the loss of the tumour suppressor Apc in ISCs and that the absence of Bcl-2 or pharmacological blockade of Bcl-2 can inhibit the intestinal tumorigenesis driven by the Apc-loss.