Dr Hans Clevers talks to ecancer at ECC 2013 about comparing colon cancer cells to healthy stem cells and combining the study to discover the process where cells become cancer cells.

Dr Clevers discusses how using an inducible Cre knock-in allele and the Rosa26-LacZ reporter strain, lineage tracing experiments were performed in adult mice. The Lgr5 ve crypt base columnar cells (CBC) generated all epithelial lineages throughout life, implying that it represents the stem cell of the small intestine and colon. Similar observations were made in hair follicles and stomach epithelium.

In the future this discovery could lead to drug development that would target this transformation.