title: Switching Roles of TGF-β in Cancer Development: Implications for Therapeutic Target and Biomarker Studies.
abstract: TGF-β induces complicated and even opposite responses in numerous biological processes, e.g., tumor suppression in pre-malignant cells and metastasis promotion in cancer cells. However, the cellular contextual determinants of these different TGF-β roles remain elusive, and the driver genes triggering the determinants' changes have not been identified. Recently, however, several findings have provided new insights on the contextual determinants of Smads in TGF-β's biological processes. These novel switches and their effectors may serve as prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets of TGF-β-mediated cancer progression.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Cancer Prevention, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA. nsun@mdanderson.org.
authors.forename: Nan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Department of Translational Molecular Pathology, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA. ataguchi@mdanderson.org.
authors.forename: Ayumu
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Taguchi
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Cancer Prevention, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA. shanash@mdanderson.org.
authors.forename: Samir
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hanash
keywords: TGF-β; biomarker; role switch; targeted therapy