# Enabling characteristic: tumour-promoting inflammation

Source: https://onco.cc/terms/tumor-promoting-inflammation/  
OnCo record `tumor-promoting-inflammation` (Term). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Chronic inflammation supplies growth factors, survival signals, and mutagens that help cancers start and grow.

## Summary

Tumour-promoting inflammation is the enabling characteristic by which chronic inflammation supplies growth factors, survival signals and mutagens that help cancers start and grow. The signalling runs through IL-6/STAT3, TNF/NF-κB, COX-2/PGE2 and inflammasomes, described in the Inflammation & NF-κB, JAK-STAT signalling and Microbiome-tumour interactions pathways, and infection-driven cancers (HPV, HBV, Helicobacter pylori) are the clearest examples, as the Oncogenic viruses pathway explains. Prevention rests on HPV & HBV vaccination, anti-infectives and aspirin, covered under Chemoprevention & risk-reducing surgery, while BTK inhibitors shut down NF-κB in B-cell cancers. Readers meet this characteristic from the Hallmarks of Cancer overview and from the Inflammation entry.

## Fields

- Kind: Term
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Tags: hallmark

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hallmarks_of_Cancer
- Hanahan, Hallmarks of Cancer: New Dimensions (Cancer Discovery 2022): https://doi.org/10.1158/2159-8290.CD-21-1059

## Connected records

- technologies: [Chemoprevention & risk-reducing surgery](https://onco.cc/technologies/chemoprevention/), [HPV & HBV vaccination](https://onco.cc/technologies/hpv-vaccine/)
- pathways: [Inflammation & NF-κB](https://onco.cc/pathways/inflammation-nfkb/), [JAK-STAT signalling](https://onco.cc/pathways/jak-stat/), [Microbiome-tumour interactions](https://onco.cc/pathways/microbiome-tumour/), [Oncogenic viruses](https://onco.cc/pathways/oncogenic-viruses/)
- targets: [COX-2 (PTGS2)](https://onco.cc/targets/cox2/)
- terms: [Hallmarks of Cancer](https://onco.cc/terms/hallmarks-of-cancer/), [Hallmarks of cancer as a synthesis of the theories](https://onco.cc/terms/hallmarks-synthesis/), [Inflammation](https://onco.cc/terms/inflammation/), [Microenvironment and inflammation: tumours as wounds that do not heal](https://onco.cc/terms/microenvironment-inflammation-theory/)
- key papers: [Grivennikov, Greten and Karin 2010: immunity, inflammation and cancer](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-grivennikov-immunity-inflammation-cancer-cell-2010/)

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