Hair-way to Cancer

Our basal cells line the deepest layer of our epidermis; they continually divide, pushing older ones towards the skin surface. Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the uncontrolled growth of these cells and the most common type of cancer in the US. Researchers have found that BCC-like tumours arise from certain hair follicle stem cells mainly because a cascade of molecules – the hedgehog signalling pathway – is abnormally activated. Triggering this pathway requires the loss of genes called tumour suppressors, which work to protect cells from becoming cancerous. Pictured is skin with hair follicles – the emerging hair is seen as a green spear. Nerves were found to be crucial for this tumour progression. Denervating – interrupting the nervous connections – reduced the number of cells at risk of becoming tumours. This is seen as a difference in the red BCs (above the roundish green cells) between normal (top panels) and denervated samples (bottom).

Written by Katie Panteli

Katie Panteli

Writer

Katie, a Warwick Biomed graduate, works for a science-publishing house in London with some of the world's most respected scientific minds. She's most interested in human biology, anything and everything that makes us tick.

• Image from work by Sunny Wong and colleagues
• University of Michigan, USA
• Copyright Elsevier 2015
• Research published in Cell Stem Cell, April 2015