Gastric-to-intestinal transdifferentiation and cancer

摘要

In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, an original short story authored by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the main character ages in reverse, beginning life as a mature adult (i.e., well-differentiated state) and then progressing inexorably toward a childlike existence (i.e., progenitor state). A molecular counterpart to this process, which frequently occurs during oncogenesis, is transdifferentiation, in which cells transition from a well-differentiated state to a progenitor state, which is then followed by the reemergence of a different cell lineage (i.e., metaplasia).