FIG. 5. Role of TNF-α in hematopoietic diseases.
Under physiological condition, TNF-α regulates hematopoietic stem cell (HSCs) function by directly promoting HSC proliferation or indirectly stimulating growth factor secretion/upregulating cytokine receptor expression. However, in the pathological circumstance, overproduced TNF-α results in oxidative stress, overactivated NF-κB and expression changes in other tumor suppressor protein/anti-apoptotic molecules, therefore leads to either cell death or leukemia evolution.