Transitional basal cells at the squamous-columnar junction generate Barrett's oesophagus.

Transitional basal cells at the squamous-columnar junction generate Barrett's oesophagus.

Nature (2017-10-12)

Ming Jiang, Haiyan Li, Yongchun Zhang, Ying Yang, Rong Lu, Kuancan Liu, Sijie Lin, Xiaopeng Lan, Haikun Wang, Han Wu, Jian Zhu, Zhongren Zhou, Jianming Xu, Dong-Kee Lee, Lanjing Zhang, Yuan-Cho Lee, Jingsong Yuan, Julian A Abrams, Timothy C Wang, Antonia R Sepulveda, Qi Wu, Huaiyong Chen, Xin Sun, Junjun She, Xiaoxin Chen, Jianwen Que

PMID29019984

摘要

In several organ systems, the transitional zone between different types of epithelium is a hotspot for pre-neoplastic metaplasia and malignancy, but the cells of origin for these metaplastic epithelia and subsequent malignancies remain unknown. In the case of Barrett's oesophagus, intestinal metaplasia occurs at the gastro-oesophageal junction, where stratified squamous epithelium transitions into simple columnar cells. On the basis of a number of experimental models, several alternative cell types have been proposed as the source of this metaplasia but in all cases the evidence is inconclusive: no model completely mimics Barrett's oesophagus in terms of the presence of intestinal goblet cells. Here we describe a transitional columnar epithelium with distinct basal progenitor cells (p63