Paragangliomas are neuroendocrine tumors that originate from cells migrating from the neural crest. They have a diverse localizations, and are common in the head, neck, mediastinum or retroperitoneum. Their growth in the filum terminale region is very infrequent. We report the case of a patient who suffered an acute cauda equina syndrome. We give a detailed description of the diagnostic process...

Neuroendocrine tumors arise from cells that originate in the neural crest. Although these cells have a common embryological origin, they are distributed to various sites and organ systems throughout the body, where they can give rise to a variety of tumor types that are related by their common embryological origin. These cells share a characteristic feature of the ability to produce peptide hor...

Marsupial mammals are born at a highly altricial state. Nonetheless, the neonate must be capable of considerable functional independence. Comparative studies have shown that in marsupials the morphogenesis of many structures critical to independent function are advanced relative to overall development. Many skeletal and muscular elements in the facial region show particular heterochrony. Becaus...

The avian spinal cord is characterized by an absence of motor nerves and sensory nerves and ganglia at its caudalmost part. Since peripheral sensory neurons derive from neural crest cells, three basic mechanisms could account for this feature: (i) the caudalmost neural tube does not generate any neural crest cells; (ii) neural crest cells originating from the caudal part of the neural tube cann...

Neuroblastoma is the most common pediatric cancer in infants, arising from the sympathoadrenal lineage of the neural crest. Despite recent advances in other pediatric cancers, long term survival in high risk cases of neuroblastoma remains below 40%. Therefore, to develop successful therapeutics targeting high risk tumors, further research into the mechanisms involved in high risk tumor formatio...

Neuroblastoma, the most frequently occurring extracranial solid tumor of childhood, arises from neural crest-derived cells that are arrested at an early stage of differentiation in the developing sympathetic nervous system. There is an urgent need to identify clinically relevant biomarkers for better prognosis and treatment of this aggressive malignancy. Eyes Absent 1 (EYA1) is an essential tra...

Neural crest cells originate at three discontinuous levels along the rostrocaudal axis of the chick rhombencephalon, centred on rhombomeres 1 and 2, 4 and 6, respectively. These are separated by the odd-numbered rhombomeres r3 and r5 which are depleted of migratory neural crest cells. Here we show elevated levels of apoptosis in the dorsal midline of r3 and r5, immediately following the formati...

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is a common birth defect in many societies. Affected individuals have neurodevelopmental disabilities and a distinctive craniofacial dysmorphology. These latter deficits originate during early development from the ethanol-mediated apoptotic depletion of cranial facial progenitors, a population known as the neural crest. We showed previously that this apoptosis is ca...

The neural crest is a uniquely vertebrate cell type present in the most basal vertebrates, but not in cephalochordates. We have studied differences in regulation of the neural crest marker AP-2 across two evolutionary transitions: invertebrate to vertebrate, and agnathan to gnathostome. Isolation and comparison of amphioxus, lamprey and axolotl AP-2 reveals its extensive expansion in the verteb...

The trunk neural crest of vertebrate embryos is a transient collection of precursor cells present along the dorsal aspect of the neural tube. These cells migrate on two distinct pathways and give rise to specific derivatives in precise embryonic locations. One group of crest cells migrates early on a ventral pathway and generates neurons and glial cells. A later-dispersing group migrates latera...