Transforming Growth Factor β in Tissue Fibrosis

Abstract

Progressive fibrosis in the kidney, liver, lung, heart, bone marrow, and skin is both a major cause of suffering and death and an important contributor to the cost of health care. All of this is likely to change in the future. Advances in cell and cytokine biology have brought a new understanding of the molecular events underlying tissue fibrosis. It is becoming clear that fibrogenesis is not a unique pathologic process but is due to excesses in the same biologic events involved in normal tissue repair1.A central event in tissue repair is the release of cytokines in response . . .