Principal signalling complexes in haematopoiesis: structural aspects and mimetic discovery

Blood production is a highly regulated process involving multiple inhibitory and stimulatory cytokines present in the haematopoietic stem cell niche. Small molecules mimics of these signalling molecules have substantial potential as drugs and in the development of bioreactors to generate blood products. We review the structural biology of the extracellular signalling domains of five of the most important cytokines, analyze their structure-property relationships, and summarize the progress in developing small molecule mimics using the molecular information from structural biology and mutation studies.