Department of Anatomical and Cellular Pathology, State Key Laboratory of Translational Oncology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China.
Int J Mol Sci. 2021 Jul 15;22(14):7575. doi: 10.3390/ijms22147575.
Transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) signaling triggers diverse biological actions in inflammatory diseases. In tissue fibrosis, it acts as a key pathogenic regulator for promoting immunoregulation via controlling the activation, proliferation, and apoptosis of immunocytes. In cancer, it plays a critical role in tumor microenvironment (TME) for accelerating invasion, metastasis, angiogenesis, and immunosuppression. Increasing evidence suggest a pleiotropic nature of TGF-β signaling as a critical pathway for generating fibrotic TME, which contains numerous cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), extracellular matrix proteins, and remodeling enzymes. Its pathogenic roles and working mechanisms in tumorigenesis are still largely unclear. Importantly, recent studies successfully demonstrated the clinical implications of fibrotic TME in cancer. This review systematically summarized the latest updates and discoveries of TGF-β signaling in the fibrotic TME.
转化生长因子-β（TGF-β）信号在炎症性疾病中触发多种生物学作用。在组织纤维化中，它作为关键的致病调节剂，通过控制免疫细胞的激活、增殖和凋亡来促进免疫调节。在癌症中，它在肿瘤微环境（TME）中发挥关键作用，促进侵袭、转移、血管生成和免疫抑制。越来越多的证据表明，TGF-β信号具有多效性，是产生纤维化 TME 的关键途径，其中包含许多癌相关成纤维细胞（CAFs）、细胞外基质蛋白和重塑酶。其在肿瘤发生中的致病作用和作用机制仍很大程度上不清楚。重要的是，最近的研究成功证明了纤维化 TME 在癌症中的临床意义。本综述系统总结了 TGF-β信号在纤维化 TME 中的最新进展和发现。
