12
Cell News 2/2015
PRIZE WINNERS
Acknowledgements
I thank Fiona Watt for her supervision during my PhD studies and
her ongoing support. I would also like to thank Charlotte Collins,
Denny Cottle and Ryan Driskell, who performed some of the work
discussed. Thank you to all other members of the Watt lab family,
especially Chris Baker, Kim Jensen, Britta Trappmann and Christine
Weber. I am grateful for a PhD studentship from the Medical Re-
search Council (MRC) UK. This work was supported by the MRC,
the Wellcome Trust, Cancer Research UK and the European Union.
References
Arwert, E.N., Hoste, E., and Watt, F.M. (2012). Epithelial stem cells, wound healing and cancer.
Nat Rev Cancer 12, 170-180.
Blanpain, C., and Fuchs, E. (2014). Stem cell plasticity. Plasticity of epithelial stem cells in tissue
regeneration. Science 344, 1242281.
Collins, C.A., Kretzschmar, K., and Watt, F.M. (2011). Reprogramming adult dermis to a neonatal
state through epidermal activation of beta-catenin. Development 138, 5189-5199.
Cotsarelis, G., Sun, T.T., and Lavker, R.M. (1990). Label-retaining cells reside in the bulge area
of pilosebaceous unit: implications for follicular stem cells, hair cycle, and skin carcinogenesis.
Cell 61, 1329-1337.
Cottle, D.L., Kretzschmar, K., Schweiger, P.J., Quist, S.R., Gollnick, H.P., Natsuga, K., Aoyagi, S., and
Watt, F.M. (2013). c-MYC-induced sebaceous gland differentiation is controlled by an androgen
receptor/p53 axis. Cell Rep 3, 427-441.
Donati, G., and Watt, F.M. (2015). Stem Cell Heterogeneity and Plasticity in Epithelia. Cell Stem
Cell 16, 465-476.
Driskell, R.R., Clavel, C., Rendl, M., and Watt, F.M. (2011). Hair follicle dermal papilla cells at a
glance. J Cell Sci 124, 1179-1182.
Driskell, R.R., Lichtenberger, B.M., Hoste, E., Kretzschmar, K., Simons, B.D., Charalambous, M., Fer-
ron, S.R., Herault, Y., Pavlovic, G., Ferguson-Smith, A.C., and Watt, F.M. (2013). Distinct fibroblast
lineages determine dermal architecture in skin development and repair. Nature 504, 277-281.
Driskell, R.R., and Watt, F.M. (2015). Understanding fibroblast heterogeneity in the skin. Trends
Cell Biol 25, 92-99.
Fujiwara, H., Ferreira, M., Donati, G., Marciano, D.K., Linton, J.M., Sato, Y., Hartner, A., Sekiguchi,
K., Reichardt, L.F., and Watt, F.M. (2011). The basement membrane of hair follicle stem cells is a
muscle cell niche. Cell 144, 577-589.
Ghazizadeh, S., and Taichman, L.B. (2001). Multiple classes of stem cells in cutaneous epitheli-
um: a lineage analysis of adult mouse skin. EMBO J 20, 1215-1222.
Horsley, V., O'Carroll, D., Tooze, R., Ohinata, Y., Saitou, M., Obukhanych, T., Nussenzweig, M., Ta-
rakhovsky, A., and Fuchs, E. (2006).
Blimp1
defines a progenitor population that governs cellular
input to the sebaceous gland. Cell 126, 597-609.
Hsu, Y.C., Li, L., and Fuchs, E. (2014). Emerging interactions between skin stem cells and their
niches. Nat Med 20, 847-856.
Kretzschmar, K., Cottle, D.L., Donati, G., Chiang, M.F., Quist, S.R., Gollnick, H.P., Natsuga, K., Lin,
K.I., and Watt, F.M. (2014). BLIMP1 is required for postnatal epidermal homeostasis but does
not define a sebaceous gland progenitor under steady-state conditions. Stem Cell Reports 3,
620-633.
Kretzschmar, K., and Watt, F.M. (2012). Lineage tracing. Cell 148, 33-45.
Kretzschmar, K., and Watt, F.M. (2014). Markers of epidermal stem cell subpopulations in adult
mammalian skin. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med 4.
Lo Celso, C., Prowse, D.M., and Watt, F.M. (2004). Transient activation of beta-catenin signalling
in adult mouse epidermis is sufficient to induce new hair follicles but continuous activation is
required to maintain hair follicle tumours. Development 131, 1787-1799.
Magnusdottir, E., Kalachikov, S., Mizukoshi, K., Savitsky, D., Ishida-Yamamoto, A., Panteleyev,
A.A., and Calame, K. (2007). Epidermal terminal differentiation depends on B lymphocyte-indu-
ced maturation protein-1. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 104, 14988-14993.
Page, M.E., Lombard, P., Ng, F., Gottgens, B., and Jensen, K.B. (2013). The epidermis comprises
autonomous compartments maintained by distinct stem cell populations. Cell Stem Cell 13,
471-482.
Solanas, G., and Benitah, S.A. (2013). Regenerating the skin: a task for the heterogeneous stem
cell pool and surrounding niche. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 14, 737-748.
Watt, F.M., and Collins, C.A. (2008). Role of beta-catenin in epidermal stem cell expansion,
lineage selection, and cancer. Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol 73, 503-512.
About the author
Kai Kretzschmar studied Biology at Goethe Uni-
versity Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and the
University of Cambridge, UK. Kai received his
PhD from the University of Cambridge working
on the plasticity of adult murine skin and epi-
dermal stem cell heterogeneity under the su-
pervision of Fiona M. Watt in her laboratories at
the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and, subsequently, the Centre for
Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at King’s College London.
For his postdoctoral research, Kai joined the laboratory of Hans C.
Clevers at the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht, The Netherlands, to
study the heterogeneity of the tumour microenvironment in colo-
rectal cancer. He is supported by long-term fellowships from the
European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) and the Human
Frontier Science Program Organization (HFSPO).
Dr. Michael Möller (Nikon GmbH), Ralph Gräf (DGZ President), Kai Kretzschmar
