转化生长因子(TGF-β)在癌症治疗中是一把双刃剑，因为它在癌症发生/发展期间具有关键但复杂的作用。当前涉及TGF-β的抗癌策略大部分将TGF-β视为一个癌症治疗靶点，这不仅在癌症控制方面严重限制了它的完全利用，而且还严重限制了这个领域的技术创新。因此，如何利用TGF-β在癌症管理中的治疗优势，是一个值得探究的有趣问题。在这里，我们将癌症标志物分为四个关键的转变事件和一个控制癌症发生和进展的有助因素，并根据这些癌症特征描绘TGF-β的复杂性，我们发现TGF-β在肿瘤起始和早期进展中起到抑制作用，在癌症转移以及其他癌症标志物中起到促进作用。我们还提出了将冷等离子体(CAP)与使用TGF-β的治疗方法相结合，以利用CAP针对癌症标志物的固有特性控制癌症的可行性和可能的情景。

Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) is a double-edged sword in cancer treatment because of its pivotal yet complex and roles played during cancer initiation/development. Current anti-cancer strategies involving TGF-β largely view TGF-β as an onco-therapeutic target that not only substantially hinders its full utilisation for cancer control, but also considerably restricts innovations in this field. Thereby, how to take advantages of therapeutically favourable properties of TGF-β for cancer management represents an interesting and less investigated problem. Here, by categorising cancer hallmarks into four critical transition events and one enabling characteristic controlling cancer initiation and progression, and delineating TGF-β complexities according to these cancer traits, we identify the suppressive role of TGF-β in tumour initiation and early-stage progression and its promotive functionalities in cancer metastasis as well as other cancer hallmarks. We also propose the feasibility and possible scenarios of combining cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) with onco-therapeutics utilising TGF-β for cancer control given the intrinsic properties of CAP against cancer hallmarks.