On the other hand, in the setting of pathological conditions, especially those with chronic inflammatory responses such as cancer, chronic infections, and certain autoimmune disorders, MDSCs can be detected at very high levels in the bone marrow and peripheral tissues (e.g., spleen, liver, lymph nodes, and blood circulation), as well as within the inflammation sites, especially as the disease progresses [
70–
72,
84–
93] (Fig. 1). For example, in many tumor mice models, a several-fold increase in the number of MDSCs in the spleen was reported [
94–
96]. Similarly, an up to 10-fold increase in the number of MDSCs in peripheral blood was reported in humans with different cancer types [
73,
84–
86]. In another example, Delano
et al. [
93] reported up to 3-fold and 10 to 20-fold increase in the number of MDSCs in the bone marrow and spleen of late septic mice, respectively. Similarly, Brudecki
et al. [
88] reported that septic mice experience at least a 3-fold increase in the number of MDSCs in the bone marrow (up to 88% in septic and 30% in normal mice). In other words, MDSC expansion is triggered in certain pathological but not in normal conditions, with some exceptions as seen for example in pregnancy (as aforementioned and will be discussed later). This raises a major question “on the origin of such expansion in abnormal conditions” in terms of whether it results from the differentiation of myeloid precursors, or from reprogramming of terminally differentiated granulocytes and agranulocytes, or both. Generally speaking, there is no doubt that there is an increased body demand for myeloid cells in response to the development of certain pathological conditions, e.g., cancer and infections, and/or as a result of their idiopathic depletion in peripheral tissues inducing “emergency myelopoiesis” [
69], a process by which hematopoiesis is triggered and directed to the myeloid over lymphoid lineage in the bone marrow to such a degree that meets the increased body demand to myeloid cells in the periphery. This process depends on the microenvironment triggering factors such as hematopoietic growth factors (mainly granulocyte/macrophage-CSF (GM-CSF), granulocyte-CSF (G-CSF), and macrophage-CSF (M-CSF)) in addition to other factors that govern the differentiation line. As a result of this increase in hematopoietic output, higher levels of immature myeloid cells will be found inside and outside the bone marrow, which is logically expected. However, whether the expansion of MDSCs in the setting of pathological conditions occurs exclusively as a result of triggering myelopoiesis in the bone marrow only or not remains a debatable issue. In recent years, increased evidence suggests that MDSC expansion could also be triggered outside the bone marrow in lymphatic tissues in a process called extramedullary myelopoiesis, which mainly occurs in spleen. It could also occur as a result of either activating the differentiation of immature myeloid cells (i.e., MDSC progenitors) present in peripheral tissues into MDSCs, or reprograming of mature myeloid immune cells (i.e., monocytes and neutrophils) to become less mature [
97], or they could still mature as they are, but gain immunosuppressive activities. For example, it has been shown that monocytes can be reprogramed to M-MDSCs in sepsis and breast cancer [
44]. Interestingly, other studies have also revealed the possibility of M-MDSCs differentiating into PMN-MDSCs [
98]. An important point to be mentioned here is that all adult myeloid cells are generated from bone marrow-derived precursors upon differentiation of hematopoietic stem cells, with two exceptions namely tissue macrophages, and resident mast cells [
69]. This is consistent with the notion that all MDSCs isolated from different anatomical structures (e.g., bone marrow, spleen, peripheral blood, or tumor tissues) share a similar phenotype, indicating that they could share a common ancestor. Based on these notions, we can say that the anatomical structure/site where MDSC expansion occurs in the setting of pathological conditions is an arguable issue, but the question of whether they have originated in tissues other than the bone marrow should not be an arguable issue anymore. However, in certain circumstances some exceptions are observed, for example, in chronic SIV infection MDSCs expand in peripheral blood while dramatically decrease in the bone marrow [
27]. Taken together, recent evidence suggests that MDSC expansion is not exclusive to the expansion of immature myeloid cells in the bone marrow via myelopoiesis. Indeed, MDSC expansion also involves extramedullary myelopoiesis in lymphatic tissues and reprograming of mature myelocytes to become MDSCs or MDSC-like cells in peripheral tissues. In addition, the aforementioned evidence about the notion that MDSC populations comprise a mixture of mature and immature myeloid suppressor cells supports this idea (Fig. 2).