Ulrich Kunzendorf

Deregulation of the Hedgehog (Hh) pathway is seen in a variety of human diseases including diabetes, ciliopathies and cancer. In cancer therapy inhibition of pathway components has become an attractive, emerging target for the treatment of malignancies. However, Hh inhibitors showed strong side effects probably due to insufficient specificity of inhibitors, which highlights the need for better models to test Hh modulators in whole animal systems. To date, in vivo models are lacking due to embryonic lethality of vertebrate Hh mutants. Sea urchin larvae are prime developmental model organisms and an excellent and established toolkit is available for molecular perturbations of Hh pathway components. Together with recently developed histological and functional markers for the normal differentiation of ion-regulatory epithelia, sea urchin larvae will be established as a powerful model to improve our understanding of physiology, pathophysiology and pharmacology of the Hh pathway.