# Differentiation

Source: https://onco.cc/terms/differentiation/  
OnCo record `differentiation` (Term). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

How closely a cancer cell still resembles the mature, specialised tissue it came from. Well-differentiated tumours look like their parent tissue and tend to behave better; poorly differentiated ones look primitive and grow faster.

## Summary

Normal cells mature from stem cells into specialised types with fixed jobs; cancer partly reverses this, and the degree of reversal is a core component of tumour grade. Differentiation also determines which markers a tumour carries and which drugs reach it: a prostate cancer that dedifferentiates into a neuroendocrine form stops making PSA and stops responding to hormone therapy, and EGFR-mutant lung cancers can escape osimertinib by transforming into small-cell histology. A few drugs work by forcing differentiation, most famously all-trans retinoic acid, which makes the immature cells of acute promyelocytic leukaemia mature and die.

## Fields

- Kind: Term
- Last checked: 2026-09-09
- Also known as: differentiated; well-differentiated; poorly differentiated; poorly-differentiated; undifferentiated; dedifferentiation; dedifferentiated; de-differentiation; lineage; lineage plasticity; cell of origin

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_differentiation
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_differentiation

## Connected records

- terms: [Drug resistance (primary and acquired)](https://onco.cc/terms/resistance/), [Grade](https://onco.cc/terms/tumour-grade/), [Histology](https://onco.cc/terms/histology/), [Stem cell](https://onco.cc/terms/stem-cell/)
- pathways: [Cancer stem cells & phenotypic plasticity](https://onco.cc/pathways/cancer-stem-cells-plasticity/)
- cancers: [Non-small-cell lung cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/nsclc/), [Prostate cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/prostate/), [Small-cell lung cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/sclc/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/differentiation.json