A long sought after "receptor" for ERFE?

In this issue of Blood, Arezes and colleagues present new and exciting evidence that erythropoietin (EPO) suppresses bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)-mediated signaling in an erythroferrone (ERFE)-dependent mechanism and ERFE in turn interferes with the binding of a specific set of BMPs to their receptors.(1) These findings represent a breakthrough in the understanding of how EPO and ERFE function to decrease hepcidin expression.