Samenvatting
Relatively quiescent tissues like salivary glands (SGs) respond to stimuli such as injury to expand, replace and regenerate. Resident stem/progenitor cells are key in this process because, upon activation, they possess the ability to self-renew. Macroautophagy/autophagy contributes to and regulates differentiation in adult tissues, but an important question is whether this pathway promotes stem cell self-renewal in tissues. We took advantage of a 3D organoid system that allows assessing the self-renewal of mouse SGs stem cells (SGSCs). We found that autophagy in dormant SGSCs has slower flux than self-renewing SGSCs. Importantly, autophagy enhancement upon SGSCs activation is a self-renewal feature in 3D organoid cultures and SGs regenerating in vivo. Accordingly, autophagy ablation in SGSCs inhibits self-renewal whereas pharmacological stimulation promotes self-renewal of mouse and human SGSCs. Thus, autophagy is a key pathway for self-renewal activation in low proliferative adult tissues, and its pharmacological manipulation has the potential to promote tissue regeneration.
Originele taal-2 | English |
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Pagina's (van-tot) | 293-308 |
Aantal pagina's | 16 |
Tijdschrift | Autophagy |
Volume | 18 |
Nummer van het tijdschrift | 2 |
Vroegere onlinedatum | 19-mei-2021 |
DOI's | |
Status | Published - 2022 |