Gehart Lab

Research focus

ERC Starting Grant · 2020

Unbiased niche identification and manipulation in stem cells and cancer

For the longest time, researchers assumed that stemness is a cell-intrinsic feature. However, recently my work and the work of others have shown that specific microenvironments can restore stem cell identity in differentiated epithelial cells or induce transitions from one mature cell type to another. This instructive capacity of niches is equally important in homeostasis and disease. Like stem cells, cancer cells only survive in particular environments that nurture and protect them. This is particularly evident in the process of metastasis where only 1 out of 10 000 circulating tumor cells will find a suitable niche to grow. Nevertheless, our understanding of stem cell and cancer niches is…

From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.