1997/01/01 by Qiuhui Li, Kiera Rycaj, Xin Chen +2 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Medicine · Social Sciences · #Cancer Cells and Metastasis #Family and Matrimonial Law #Hippo pathway signaling and YAP/TAZ #Pluripotent Stem Cells Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.semcancer.2015.07.002
openalex publication_date 1997/01/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/24
The majority of normal animal cells are 10-20 μm in diameter. Many signaling mechanisms, notably PI3K/Akt/mTOR, Myc, and Hippo pathways, tightly control and coordinate cell growth, cell size, cell division, and cell number during homeostasis. These regulatory mechanisms are frequently deregulated during tumorigenesis resulting in wide variations in cell sizes and increased proliferation in cancer cells. Here, we first review the evidence that primitive stem cells in adult tissues are quiescent and generally smaller than their differentiated progeny, suggesting a correlation between small cell sizes with the stemness. Conversely, increased cell size positively correlates with differentiation phenotypes. We then discuss cancer stem cells (CSCs) and present some evidence that correlates cell sizes with CSC activity. Overall, a causal link between CSCs and cell size is relatively weak and remains to be rigorously assessed. In the future, optimizing methods for isolating cells based on size should help elucidate the connection between cancer cell size and CSC characteristics.