Developmental signaling
Sonic Hedgehog↓
Also searched as Sonic Hedgehog.
this one cuts both ways and we say so. Too little and stem-cell renewal stalls; too much and the same signal drives tumors. The approved drugs that block it — vismodegib, sonidegib — are for metastatic basal cell carcinoma, and over half of treated patients stopped because of side effects. The archetypal natural blocker, cyclopamine, is named for the CYCLOPIA it caused in lambs. Nothing here is a Hedgehog drug: the botanicals on this pathway were measured as modest modulators in cell work, and not in pregnancy.
In depth
Sonic Hedgehog — the signal that told your body where to put things while you were an embryo, and that adult tissue still uses to tell stem cells when to divide.
What drives it
Liver cell swelling increases it.
Ballooned, lipotoxically injured hepatocytes are the principal source of Hedgehog ligand in fatty liver disease. PMID 21547909
What it drives
It increases Tissue renewal signaling.
Sonic Hedgehog is crucial to embryonic development and is re-used in adult tissue for stem-cell maintenance, working alongside Wnt as the paired developmental programs reactivated in regeneration. PMC3671665
It increases Clears worn-out cells.
10.3389/fcell.2021.716610 — 10.1038/s12276-025-01626-7 — Active Hedgehog signaling keeps progenitor cells cycling and so delays replicative exhaustion. The same property is why blocking it is a cancer drug — this is a switch, and mixed inbound signs are correct. doi 10.3389/fcell.2021.716610
Blends that modulate it
Each blend page names this pathway and carries the study behind its claim.
See it on the map
Open the causal map to follow this pathway upstream and downstream, arrow by arrow, each with its study.