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Chronic inflammation is soil for cancer: it feeds growth signals, DNA damage, and immune suppression. The NF-κB switch inside cells is the master relay, and colitis, hepatitis, and H. pylori gastritis are the clinical proof.
Tumour-promoting inflammation (a hallmark enabling characteristic) acts through IL-6/STAT3, TNF/NF-κB, IL-1β, COX-2/PGE2, and inflammasome signalling. NF-κB (canonical IKK/IκB and non-canonical NIK/RelB) drives survival, cytokine production, and the SASP; it is constitutively active in many lymphomas (ABC-DLBCL via MYD88/CD79B, BTK-dependent) and myeloma. Aspirin reduces colorectal cancer in Lynch syndrome (CAPP2) and canakinumab reduced lung cancer incidence in CANTOS (secondary analysis), though as treatment it failed. Anti-inflammatory chemoprevention is one of the few validated mechanism-based preventions.
A wound that never heals: the repair crews keep pouring in growth signals and clearing away rubble, and a wound that is always being rebuilt is a wound where mistakes accumulate.
Relapse after surgery is driven by particular subclones that can be identified in the primary tumour and tracked in blood, which argues for evolution-aware adjuvant strategies. The pollution finding reframes carcinogenesis: some agents promote already-mutant cells rather than causing mutations.
One pathway page on OnCo cites this paper by its DOI; this record gives the citation a page of its own so a reader can follow it without leaving OnCo. Read the abstract above alongside the citing page listed under Related; the record was created automatically from the Europe PMC entry and its figures have not been checked by hand.
This paper is the molecular sequel to the 2002 inflammation and cancer review and the basis for IL-6, JAK-STAT and NF-kB directed strategies in cancer as well as for aspirin and other anti-inflammatory prevention trials.
Together with the 2002 Nature review this essay put inflammation on the cancer research agenda; the tumour-associated macrophage and IL-6 work that followed, and the aspirin prevention trials, trace back to it.
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