| First Author | Junankar S | Year | 2015 |
| Journal | Nat Commun | Volume | 6 |
| Pages | 6548 | PubMed ID | 25813983 |
| Mgi Jnum | J:221862 | Mgi Id | MGI:5641774 |
| Doi | 10.1038/ncomms7548 | Citation | Junankar S, et al. (2015) ID4 controls mammary stem cells and marks breast cancers with a stem cell-like phenotype. Nat Commun 6:6548 |
| abstractText | Basal-like breast cancer (BLBC) is a heterogeneous disease with poor prognosis; however, its cellular origins and aetiology are poorly understood. In this study, we show that inhibitor of differentiation 4 (ID4) is a key regulator of mammary stem cell self-renewal and marks a subset of BLBC with a putative mammary basal cell of origin. Using an ID4GFP knock-in reporter mouse and single-cell transcriptomics, we show that ID4 marks a stem cell-enriched subset of the mammary basal cell population. ID4 maintains the mammary stem cell pool by suppressing key factors required for luminal differentiation. Furthermore, ID4 is specifically expressed by a subset of human BLBC that possess a very poor prognosis and a transcriptional signature similar to a mammary stem cell. These studies identify ID4 as a mammary stem cell regulator, deconvolute the heterogeneity of BLBC and link a subset of mammary stem cells to the aetiology of BLBC. |
