Under pathological conditions like infection and inflammation, hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) can produce all types of immune effector cells through inflammatory signaling stimulation for the body homeostasis.

An unexpected observation from Prof. Feng Liu’s lab, the Hematopoiesis and Cardiovascular Development Group, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and others is that genes involved in innate immunity and inflammatory signaling are enriched in emerging hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and their niche during embryogenesis (Blood 2015). Thus, inflammatory signaling may also play a role in HSC development in the absence of infection and inflammation.

Current Opinion in Hematology invited Prof. Feng Liu to contribute an invited review about the inflammatory signaling and HSC development. This review summarizes recent advances in inflammatory signaling with particular focus on how distinct inflammatory signaling regulates HSC development. Understanding the underlying mechanism of inflammatory signaling on HSC development may help to generate and/or expand a large number of functional HSCs for clinical application.

This research was supported by grants from the National Basic Research Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the CAS.

Website link: (http://journals.lww.com/co-hematology/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=2016&issue=01000&article=00005&type=abstract)