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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Dec 3.
Published in final edited form as: Cell. 2008 Jul 25;134(2):215–230. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2008.07.001

Figure 1. The Role of TGFβ in Cancer.

Figure 1

In normal and premalignant cells, TGFβ enforces homeostasis and suppresses tumor progression directly through cell-autonomous tumor-suppressive effects (cytostasis, differentiation, apoptosis) or indirectly through effects on the stroma (suppression of inflammation and stroma-derived mitogens). However, when cancer cells lose TGFβ tumor-suppressive responses, they can use TGFβ to their advantage to initiate immune evasion, growth factor production, differentiation into an invasive phenotype, and metastatic dissemination or to establish and expand metastatic colonies.