LIF: not just a leukemia inhibitory factor

Increasingly it seems that many cytokines are pleiotropic, and individual molecules may have critical roles in several different organ systems. LIF exemplifies this phenomenon: it influences embryogenesis, bone and lipid metabolism, and hematopoietic and nervous system function. Many of LIF's effects are reminiscent of those of IL-1, TNF, and TGF-beta. Further, even within a single system, LIF can display totally different effects, i.e. induction of differentiation of one leukemic cell line vs. stimulation of proliferation of another. The corollary to these observations is that there appears to be many parallels in developmental systems. For instance, in the case of neuronal "lineage commitment," the events that relate to migration of neural crest cells along various pathways and their ultimate arrest in different locales demonstrate sufficient analogies to hematopoietic lineage commitment phenomena that, in a provocative review, Anderson coined the term "neuropoiesis". This type of analogy becomes even more intriguing when one realizes that some of the same molecules are regulating neuronal and hematopoietic "lineage" proliferation and differentiation. In this respect, several interleukins in addition to LIF are important in neuronal development, and nerve growth factor turns out to also be a hematopoietic regulatory molecule. Similar parallels are enacted in other organ systems as well. The mediation of identical effects by distinct cytokines bound to unique receptors could conceivably be explained by receptor transmodulation or by overlapping signaling sequences. It is nevertheless also unclear how a single cytokine attached to a single receptor can accomplish varied and opposing effects, although divergent intracellular signaling mechanisms could account for some of these phenomena. Yet another enigma relates to how cells from one system can be properly influenced by a pleiotropic molecule such as LIF without significant "cross-effects" on other potentially responsive systems. Cytokine production that is restricted to certain developmental stages, or very localized distribution and spheres of influence within a microenvironment, could be explanatory. The findings of Rathjan and colleagues, i.e. that LIF exists as both a diffusible molecule and as a molecule incorporated into the extracellular matrix, is of special interest in relation to the above questions. Indeed, the distinctions between the roles of diffusible and immobilized signaling molecules could be crucial to the multiplicity of LIF's actions. Diffusible regulatory factors allow communication between spatially separated cells. Cellular responsiveness to such factors is dictated by the presence of appropriate receptors and postreceptor machinery.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)