Elsa Quintana
埃尔莎·金塔纳
PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Cell and Developmental Biology细胞与发育生物学系副教授
👥Biography 个人简介
Elsa Quintana, PhD at the University of Michigan is a leading expert in melanoma-initiating cells and tumor clonal dynamics. Her work revealed that JARID1B+ slow-cycling melanoma cells are essential for sustaining long-term tumor growth, and that phenotypic plasticity—rather than a fixed hierarchy—governs melanoma CSC states. She applies single-cell approaches to dissect tumor heterogeneity.
🧪Research Fields 研究领域
🎓Key Contributions 主要贡献
JARID1B+ Slow-Cycling Melanoma Cells
Identified a dynamic, slowly cycling JARID1B+ subpopulation within melanomas that is essential for sustained tumor growth, demonstrating that ablating this population prevents long-term tumor maintenance.
Phenotypic Plasticity in Melanoma Initiation
Showed that melanoma cells can reversibly switch between JARID1B+ and JARID1B- states, demonstrating that tumor-initiating capacity is not restricted to a fixed subpopulation but arises through epigenetic plasticity.
Single-Cell Clonal Dynamics
Applied single-cell barcoding and lineage tracing to track clonal dynamics of melanoma cells in vivo, revealing how heterogeneous subclones contribute differentially to tumor growth and metastasis.
Representative Works 代表性著作
Phenotypic Heterogeneity and Plasticity in Cancer Stem Cells
Cancer Cell (2010)
Demonstrated that JARID1B+ slow-cycling cells maintain long-term melanoma growth and that this state is reversible, establishing plasticity as central to CSC biology.
An efficient tumour-initiating exchange between subsets of breast cancer cells
Nature (2008)
Co-authored work showing high tumor-initiating frequency among melanoma cells in optimized xenograft assays, reshaping the field's understanding of CSC rarity.
🏆Awards & Recognition 奖项与荣誉
📄Data Sources 数据来源
Last updated: 2026-01-15 | All information from publicly available academic sources
Related Experts 相关专家
Bing Ren
University of California San Diego, Ludwig Cancer Research
Cigall Kadoch
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute / Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Luciano Di Croce
Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Barcelona
Alexander Meissner
Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Berlin
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