Xencor

Publications

Zhukovsky E.A. and Morse R.J. (2004)

Pleiotropy: the BAFFling truth of the TNF superfamily. Drug Discovery Today: Targets, vol.3, No. 6, pp. 225-227

The 10th biennial International TNFSF Conference, held 29 September to 2 October 2004 in Lausanne, Switzerland, covered new advances in our understanding of TNFSF 20 years after the cloning of TNFa. As one speaker noted, “the truth and nothing but the truth“ is a difficult metric to apply to the biology and practical therapeutic aspects of TNFSF cytokines because of our growing understanding of the pleiotropic nature of TNF cytokine action. This context-dependent activity is further complicated as biological signaling pathways that were recently thought to be independent are now known to exhibit significant cross-talk. An example of the dual roles many TNFSF cytokines play in disease pathogenesis can be found in our emerging understanding of the inflammation-cancer link elucidated by studies of TNFa signaling.