There is an Addendum (May 2005) associated with this Article.
A dermal niche for multipotent adult skin-derived precursor cells
Karl J. L. Fernandes1, 2, 8, Ian A. McKenzie2, 5, 8, Pleasantine Mill2, 3, Kristen M. Smith1, 2, Mahnaz Akhavan2, Fanie Barnabé-Heider2, 5, Jeff Biernaskie2, Adrienne Junek7, Nao R. Kobayashi2, Jean G. Toma2, David R. Kaplan1, 2, 3, Patricia A. Labosky6, Victor Rafuse7, Chi-Chung Hui2, 3
& Freda D. Miller2, 3, 4
1
Department of Cancer Research, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1X8, Canada.
2
Department of Developmental Biology, Hospital For Sick Children Research Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1X8, Canada.
3
Departments of Medical and Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1X8, Canada.
4
Department of Physiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1X8, Canada.
5
Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2B4, Canada.
6
Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6058, USA.
7
Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 1X5, Canada.
8
These authors contributed equally to this work.
Correspondence should be addressed to Freda D. Miller fredam@sickkids.ca
A fundamental question in stem cell research is whether cultured multipotent adult stem cells represent endogenous multipotent precursor cells. Here we address this question, focusing on SKPs, a cultured adult stem cell from the dermis that generates both neural and mesodermal progeny. We show that SKPs derive from endogenous adult dermal precursors that exhibit properties similar to embryonic neural-crest stem cells. We demonstrate that these endogenous SKPs can first be isolated from skin during embryogenesis and that they persist into adulthood, with a niche in the papillae of hair and whisker follicles. Furthermore, lineage analysis indicates that both hair and whisker follicle dermal papillae contain neural-crest-derived cells, and that SKPs from the whisker pad are of neural-crest origin. We propose that SKPs represent an endogenous embryonic precursor cell that arises in peripheral tissues such as skin during development and maintains multipotency into adulthood.
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