Everything about Growth Factors totally explained
The term
growth factor refers to a naturally occurring
protein capable of stimulating cellular proliferation and
cellular differentiation. Growth factors are important for regulating a variety of cellular processes.
Growth factors typically act as signaling molecules between cells. Examples are
cytokines and
hormones that bind to specific
receptors on the surface of their target
cells.
They often promote cell differentiation and maturation, which varies between growth factors. For example,
bone morphogenic proteins stimulate bone cell differentiation, while
fibroblast growth factors and
vascular endothelial growth factors stimulate blood vessel differentiation (
angiogenesis).
Growth factors versus cytokines
Growth factor is sometimes used interchangeably among scientists with the term
cytokine. Historically, cytokines were associated with
hematopoietic (blood forming) cells and
immune system cells (for example, lymphocytes and tissue cells from
spleen,
thymus, and
lymph nodes). For the
circulatory system and
bone marrow in which cells can occur in a liquid suspension and not bound up in solid
tissue, it makes sense for them to communicate by soluble, circulating protein
molecules. However, as different lines of research converged, it became clear that some of the same signaling proteins the hematopoietic and
immune systems used were also being used by all sorts of other cells and tissues, during development and in the mature organism.
While
growth factor implies a positive effect on cell division,
cytokine is a neutral term with respect to whether a molecule affects proliferation. In this sense, some cytokines can be growth factors, such as
G-CSF and
GM-CSF. However, some cytokines have an inhibitory effect on cell growth or proliferation. Yet others, such as
Fas ligand are used as "death" signals; they cause target cells to undergo programmed
cell death or
apoptosis.
Example of growth factors
Individual growth factor proteins tend to occur as members of larger families of structurally and
evolutionarily related proteins. There are dozens and dozens of growth factor families such as TGF-beta (
transforming growth factor-beta), BMP (
bone morphogenic protein),
neurotrophins (NGF, BDNF, and NT3),
fibroblast growth factor (FGF), and so on.
Several well known growth factors are:
Uses in medicine
For the last two decades, growth factors have been increasingly used in the treatment of
hematologic and
oncologic diseases and cardiovascular diseases like:
neutropenia
myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS)
leukemias
aplastic anaemia
bone marrow transplantation
angiogenesis for cardiovascular diseasesFurther Information
Get more info on 'Growth Factors'.
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