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Chief cells lie at the base of the stomach’s gastric glands, and in healthy individuals they are responsible for secreting enzymes required for digestion. Scientists have proposed that, in the face of injury or genetic mutations, these cells revert back to stem cells—or dedifferentiate—and give rise to abnormal changes in tissue called metaplasia, a precancerous state.
This idea emerged more than a decade ago from the observation of a specific type of metaplasia in stomach tissue called spasmolytic polypeptide-expressing metaplasia (SPEM), which appeared to originate from chief cells. Over the years, the body of evidence supporting this hypothesis has grown. But some scientists still question whether chief cells truly give rise to the precursors of cancer.
Yoku Hayakawa, a professor of gastroenterology at the University of Tokyo in Japan, is one of the skeptics. He says there have been technical limitations with the previous work, such ...
