Jun Sun, Lingling Hu, Seoyeon Bok, Alisha R Yallowitz, Michelle Cung, Jason McCormick, Ling J Zheng, Shawon Debnath, Yuzhe Niu, Adrian Y Tan, Sarfaraz Lalani, Kyle W Morse, Daniel Shinn, Anthony Pajak, Mohammed Hammad, Vincentius Jeremy Suhardi, Zan Li, Na Li, Lijun Wang, Weiguo Zou, Vivek Mittal, Mathias P G Bostrom, Ren Xu, Sravisht Iyer, Matthew B Greenblatt
Vertebral bone is subject to a distinct set of disease processes from long bones, including a much higher rate of solid tumour metastases1-4 . The basis for this distinct biology of vertebral bone has so far remained unknown. Here we identify a vertebral skeletal stem cell (vSSC) that co-expresses ZIC1 and PAX1 together with additional cell surface markers. vSSCs display formal evidence of stemness, including self-renewal, label retention and sitting at the apex of their differentiation hierarchy. vSSCs are physiologic mediators of vertebral bone formation, as genetic blockade of the ability of vSSCs to generate osteoblasts results in defects in the vertebral neural arch and body...
September 13, 2023: Nature