Elevated Bmi-1 expression is associated with dysplastic cell transformation during oral carcinogenesis and is required for cancer cell replication and survival.
Modulation of Bmi-1 is found in several tumor tissues, including primary breast carcinomas; however, analysis of Bmi-1 in plasma of cancer patients has not been reported.
Thus, these mice allow for the isolation of viable Bmi-1-expressing cells and have the potential to become a useful tool for understanding the role of Bmi-1 in normal and cancer stem cells in multiple tissue types.
These studies support a cancer stem cell model in which the hedgehog pathway and Bmi-1 play important roles in regulating self-renewal of normal and tumorigenic human mammary stem cells.
The polycomb group protein BMI1 has been shown to support normal stem cell proliferation via its putative stem cell factor function, but it is not known if BMI1 may also act as a cancer stem cell factor to promote cancer development.