A SHHecret target of relapsed medulloblastoma: Astrocytes

In this issue of JEM, Guo et al. (2021. J. Exp. Med. https://doi.org/10.1084/jem.20202350) examine the importance of tumorderived astrocytes in SHH-medulloblastoma recurrence. They show that tumor cells transdifferentiate to tumor-derived astrocytes via bone morphogenetic proteins and Sox9, which excitingly can be targeted by BMP inhibitors.

Automated summary

The study reveals that bone morphogenetic proteins and Sox9 promote the transdifferentiation of tumor cells into tumor-derived astrocytes, which can be targeted by BMP inhibitors.