OBJECTIVE Sonic hedgehog is produced in gastric epithelial cells and plays a crucial role in parietal cell function and the regulation of gastric epithelial cell differentiation. Emerging evidence suggests that the sonic hedgehog pathway is not only involved in the development of cancers but also in their progression and aggressiveness. METHODS To assess its prognostic value in gastric cancer...

As a major regulatory pathway for embryonic development and tissue patterning, hedgehog signaling is not active in most adult tissues, but is reactivated in a number of human cancer types. A major milestone in hedgehog signaling in cancer is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of a smoothened inhibitor Vismodegib for treatment of basal cell carcinomas. Vismodegib can block ligand-me...

The Drosophila Hedgehog protein and its vertebrate counterpart Sonic hedgehog are required for a wide variety of patterning events throughout development. Hedgehog proteins are secreted from cells and undergo autocatalytic cleavage and cholesterol modification to produce a mature signaling domain. This domain of Sonic hedgehog has recently been shown to acquire an N-terminal acyl group in cell ...

A five-year-old female African hedgehog (Atelerix albiventris) was referred for a one month growing oral mass. The hedgehog was quiet, alert and responsive, with a 1.00 × 1.50 cm ulcerated lesion on the mandible. The patient was staged with total body radiographs, hematological and biochemical analyses and the mass was biopsied under anesthesia. The excised tissue was reported to be a ...

Hedgehog (Hh) signaling is vital for the patterning and organogenesis of almost every system. The specificity of these developmental processes is achieved through a tight spatio-temporal regulation of Hh signaling. Mice with defective Hh signal exhibit a wide spectrum of anomalies, including Vertebral defects, Anal atresia, Cardiovascular anomalies, Tracheoesophageal fistula, Renal dysplasia, a...

The developing forelimb is patterned along the proximal-distal and anterior-posterior axes by opposing gradients of retinoic acid and fibroblast growth factors and by graded sonic hedgehog signaling, respectively. However, how coordinated patterning along both axes is accomplished with temporal precision remains unknown. The limb molecular oscillator hairy2 was recently shown to be a direct rea...

Many signaling proteins including G protein-coupled receptors localize to primary cilia, regulating cellular processes including differentiation, proliferation, organogenesis, and tumorigenesis. Bardet-Biedl Syndrome (BBS) proteins are involved in maintaining ciliary function by mediating protein trafficking to the cilia. However, the mechanisms governing ciliary trafficking by BBS proteins are...

The Hedgehog/Patched signaling pathway plays a prominent role during mammalian development but it is also involved in oncogenic transformation. We investigated the methylation status of the Patched promotor in a set of basocellular carcinomas of the skin and ovarian tumors as an alternative to mutational causes of the pathway deregulation. Our aim was to define a possible role of genetic and/or...

To uncover regulatory mechanisms in Hedgehog (Hh) signaling, we conducted genome-wide screens to identify positive and negative pathway components and validated top hits using multiple signaling and differentiation assays in two different cell types. Most positive regulators identified in our screens, including Rab34, Pdcl, and Tubd1, were involved in ciliary functions, confirming the central r...

Hedgehog (Hh) proteins are secreted signaling molecules that mediate essential tissue-patterning events during embryonic development and function in tissue homeostasis and regeneration throughout life. Hh signaling is regulated by multiple mechanisms, including covalent lipid modification of the Hh protein and interactions with multiple protein and glycan partners. Unraveling the nature and eff...