Receptors for FGF in morphogenesis and development

The Ogle laboratory conducts research in stem cell biology, growth factor signaling, and tumor metastasis.   They have characterized the adipose stem cells (ASCs), abundant multipotent stem cells with great plasticity and therapeutic potential, and have discovered a novel type of multipotent stem cell from the dura mater. They suggest that in many respects tumorigenesis and metastasis are stem cell diseases and are interested in how tumor cells interact with host stem cells during metastasis, postulating that metastatic cells induce a variety of cell responses in resident stem cells, including differentiation, recruitment to the tumor and target tissue modification.  The lab is designing a stem cell array to detect the potential of breast and prostate cells to induce osteolytic (osteoclast) or osteoblastic differentiation in resident stem cells.  The recently recognized, but quite unexpected properties of stem cells, include immunosuppression, which could promote tumor growth unintentionally, and the ability to destroy invading tumor cells. The lab is also delivering both adult and embryonic stem cells to build and remodel tissues in vivo.  This approach could afford the best methods for reconstruction of tissues removed during cancer surgery. Additional studies are focused on the signaling mechanisms of FGFs and FGF receptors (FGFR). They have discovered that proteolytic shedding of FGF receptors is a major regulatory mechanism in normal bone development and strongly suspect that human FGFR mutations associated with many skeletal growth disorders act by perturbing the cleavage of the FGFRs.  These signaling mechanisms are employed in virtually all tumor cells, thus it is quite possible that receptor shedding processes are ones that could be critical to tumor cell growth.

These studies have been greatly enhanced through use of CCSG core facilities including FACS and DNA in characterization of the stem cells and SAM in following stem cell traffic and measuring healing of tissues in tissue engineering studies.  As the laboratory helps establish the Stem Cell Center of excellence, the MS and PSC will be critical in achieving the goal of accurate proteomic analysis of the plasma membrane proteome of each of the progenitor types derived from human stem cells.