Developmental pathways controlling cell

Developmental pathways controlling cell cycle progression... 

Part 4 considers loss of regulatory control and its consequences with respect to the molecular basis of cancer. It first describes the cellular regulatory proteins that have oncogenic potential, how they can become oncogenic and cause the transformation of normal cells to cancerous cells. Next is an analysis of the loss of developmental controls, the APC protein, (3-catenin, and the Wnt pathway, that lead to mature terminally differentiated cells reverting to immature embryonic cells. The book ends with a summary of the molecular and cellular causes of cancer and an outlook for novel therapies. 

Differentiation is the developmental process by which early pluripotent cells acquire the features of late-stage, mature cells such as neurons, hepatocytes, or heart muscle cells. Currently, few examples of devised, highly selective, and efficient conditions for stem cell differentiation into specific homogeneous cell types have been reported because of a lack of understanding of stem cell signaling at the molecular level. Small-molecule phenotypic screens provide another means to generate desired cell types in a controlled manner. Several small molecules have been identified by this method that modulate specific differentiation pathways of embryonic or adult stem cells. 

---