The Hen or the Egg: Inflammatory Aspects of Murine MPN Models

Figure 1

Multistep process for inflammatory driven neoplastic transformation. Stress, induced by various intrinsic and extrinsic factors, causes epithelial cells as well as stromal macrophages to release cytokines and other proliferation-promoting molecules, which lead to enhanced proliferation of surrounding cells. In a second step, enhanced proliferation increases the chance of stochastic mutations, leading first to hyperplasia and subsequently, with the accumulation of additional aberrations, to neoplasia.