At the Crossroads of Inflammation and Tumorigenesis

In this issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine, Hudson et al. 1 report on the identification of a cytokine, the macrophage migration inhibitory factor or MIF, that overcomes p53 function by suppressing its transcriptional activity, thus linking complex programs that govern proinflammatory response and cell fate. p53 has a key role in the regulation of cell growth and death, and its involvement in these regulatory systems may reflect its ability to respond to different cellular stress situations by inducing cell cycle arrest or apoptosis (see references 2–4 for reviews on the topic and below for more details on p53 function). When altered by germ line or somatic mutations, by aberrant patterns of expression, or through the inactivating potential of Mdm2 or certain viral oncoproteins, loss of wild-type p53 function is responsible for tumorigenesis and tumor progression 5...