Erythropoietin: not just about erythropoiesis.

摘要

A paper by Sinclair and colleagues1 in Blood challenges, on the basis of observations on cell lines, the concept that erythropoietin has activities unrelated to erythrodifferentiation. Sinclair and colleagues, based at Amgen, have published six papers since 2006 focused on whether the erythropoietin receptor (EPOR) is expressed by tumour cells-a fact that, if true, could have adverse effects for the use of erythropoietin in cancer. They conclude that EPOR is not expressed by many of the cells previously reported to express EPOR and exhibit cytoprotection by erythropoietin, and question the entire concept that erythropoietin is active on non-haemopoietic cells.