Fig. 1

The developmental origin of neuroblastoma and its relationship to the heterogeneity of tumor cell differentiation. A schematic illustration of the developmental pathway of the neural crest cells that give rise to neuroblastoma is presented [1, 2]. The tumor-initiating cells are thought to have committed to the sympathoadrenal lineages and to be on the pathways toward differentiating into various mature cell types (e.g., sympathetic ganglia and chromaffin). The ADRN and MES cell states in NB tumors (which evidently correspond to previously defined N/I and S cell types, respectively) may reflect different stages of neural crest differentiation along these pathways