TGFβ signaling: a friend or a foe to hepatic fibrosis and tumorigenesis

Transforming growth factor-β (TGFβ) signaling pathway is an important regulator of cell survival, proliferation, differentiation, migration and immunosurveillance (1). It translates extracellular cues into appropriate gene expression response. It possesses relatively simple machinery, but it is finely tuned to a variety of processes, both temporally and spatially at different levels, including ligand expression and activation, receptor complex formation, effector activation, modification and translocation and availability of transcriptional partners in the nucleus. Therefore, the readout of TGFβ signals strongly depends on the cellular context.