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The p53 family in differentiation and tumorigenesis

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 7, pages 165–167 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

The role of p53 as a tumour suppressor is generally attributed to its ability to stop the proliferation of precancerous cells by inducing cell-cycle arrest or apoptosis. The relatives and evolutionary predecessors of p53 — p63 and p73 — share the tumour-suppressor activity of p53 to some extent, but also have essential functions in embryonic development and differentiation control. Recent evidence indicates that these ancestral functions in differentiation control contribute to the tumour-suppressor activity that the p53 family is famous for.

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Figure 1: p53-family-based cell-fate decisions.
Figure 2: p53 family functions in myogenic differentiation and in rhabdomyosarcoma.

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Acknowledgements

I thank the many colleagues who have contributed to these ideas, the members of my lab, and M. Schön for critical reading of the manuscript. I apologize to all colleagues whose work, although relevant, could not be cited owing to space constraints. The work was supported by grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Deutsche Krebshilfe.

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  1. Thorsten Stiewe is at the Molecular Tumour Biology Group, Rudolf-Virchow-Center (DFG Research Center for Experimental Biomedicine), University of Würzburg, Versbacher Str. 9, 97078 Würzburg, Germany. thorsten.stiewe@virchow.uni-wuerzburg.de,

    Thorsten Stiewe

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Stiewe, T. The p53 family in differentiation and tumorigenesis. Nat Rev Cancer 7, 165–167 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc2072

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