The biology and function of fibroblasts in cancer
Paper cited by one pathway page, indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 27550820 and published in Nature Reviews Cancer; the citing page links this DOI, which is how the record was matched.
Overview
Among all cells, fibroblasts could be considered the cockroaches of the human body. They survive severe stress that is usually lethal to all other cells, and they are the only normal cell type that can be live-cultured from post-mortem and decaying tissue. Their resilient adaptation may reside in their intrinsic survival programmes and cellular plasticity. Cancer is associated with fibroblasts at all stages of disease progression, including metastasis, and they are a considerable component of the general host response to tissue damage caused by cancer cells. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) become synthetic machines that produce many different tumour components. CAFs have a role in creating extracellular matrix (ECM) structure and metabolic and immune reprogramming of the tumour microenvironment with an impact on adaptive resistance to chemotherapy. The pleiotropic actions of CAFs on tumour cells are probably reflective of them being a heterogeneous and plastic population with context-dependent influence on cancer.
Indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 27550820 (DOI 10.1038/nrc.2016.73). Matched by DOI alone: one pathway page cites this DOI among its external links (the pages are listed under Related), and this page was written so that the citation resolves inside OnCo. No figure has been checked by an editor.
One pathway page on OnCo cites this paper by its DOI; this record gives the citation a page of its own so a reader can follow it without leaving OnCo. Read the abstract above alongside the citing page listed under Related; the record was created automatically from the Europe PMC entry and its figures have not been checked by hand.
- Matched to the citing OnCo records by DOI alone; the summary reproduces the Europe PMC abstract and no figure has been verified against the full paper.