The Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) ontology is downloaded weekly from EMBL-EBI at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/chebi/. The data is made available under the Creative Commons License (CC BY 3.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). For more information see: Degtyarenko et al. (2008) ChEBI: a database and ontology for chemical entities of biological interest. Nucleic Acids Res. 36, D344–D350.
TNF-alpha is released from macrophages, monocytes, neutrophils, T-cells (principally CD4+), NK-cells and many transformed cell lines. Soluble homotrimeric TNF-alpha released from cells by proteolysis of the integral membrane precursor form of TNF-alpha. TNF-alpha binding to some TNF-alpha receptors induces apoptosis and depending on cell type, receptor expression, and signal transduction status can induce other responses. TNF-a is involved in the inflammatory response.