Review Volume 15, Issue 14 pp 7324—7332

The Eph/Ephrin system in primary bone tumor and bone cancer pain

Lujuan Wang2, *, , Wei Li1, *, , Yong Pan1, ,

  • 1 Hunan Cancer Hospital and The Affiliated Cancer Hospital of Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University, Changsha 410013, Hunan, China
  • 2 Hunan Key Laboratory of Tumor Models and Individualized Medicine, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha 410011, Hunan, China
* Equal contribution

Received: April 14, 2023       Accepted: June 19, 2023       Published: July 6, 2023      

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.204852
How to Cite

Copyright: © 2023 Wang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

The family of Eph receptor tyrosine kinases and their Ephrin ligands system constitutes a bidirectional signaling pathway. Eph/Ephrin system coordinate a wide spectrum of pathologic processes during development, metastasis, prognosis, drug resistance and angiogenesis in carcinogenesis. Chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy are the most commonly used clinical treatments for primary bone tumors. Therefore, surgical resection is often unable to completely eliminate the tumor, and this is the main cause of metastasis and postoperative recurrence. A growing body of literature has been published lately revitalizing our scientific interest towards the role of Eph/Ephrins in pathogenesis and the treatment of bone tumor and bone cancer pain. This study mainly reviewed the roles of Eph/Ephrin system that has both tumor-suppressing and -promoting roles in primary bone tumors and bone cancer pain. Understanding the intracellular mechanisms of Eph/Ephrin system in tumorigenesis and metastasis of bone tumors might provide a foundation for the development of Eph/Ephrin targeted anti-cancer therapy.

Abbreviations

Eph: erythropoietin hepatocyte kinase receptor; RTKs: receptor tyrosine kinases; BCP: bone cancer pain; GPI: glycosylphosphatidylinositol; SAM: sterile alpha constitutive motif; MM: multiple myeloma; sFRP-2: fuchs-related protein 2; MMECs: MM patients’ vascular endothelial cells; ECs: endothelial cells; BMSCs: bone marrow stromal cells; OS: osteosarcoma; ES: Ewing’s sarcoma; CAV1: caveolin-1; IL1B: interleukin-1B; IL6: interleukin-6; TNF-α: tumor necrosis factor-α.