Cancer of the oesophageal epithelium is common and usually fatal. The cell biology of this tissue is therefore an important area of research, the identification of oesophageal stem cells being of particular relevance. In a Commentary on p. 1783, John Seery reviews recent work indicating that the stem cell compartment of this many-layered tissue is the interpapillary basal layer (IBL), a single layer of cells attached to the basement membrane that lie between the papillary structures that regularly invaginate the epithelium. IBL cells have a high proliferative capacity but divide relatively infrequently in vivo, and they are `phenotypically primitive'. Moreover, each cell divides asymmetrically to produce a cell that remains in the same region (another stem cell) and a cell that enters the layer above and divides more frequently (a transit amplifying cell that will undergo further division but eventually differentiate). Seery discusses the biology of these putative oesophageal...

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