TY - JOUR
AU - Xu, Wenfeng
AB - 


Cytokines are important in the regulation of haematopoiesis and immune responses. Regulated physiological processes include the survival and proliferation of haematopoietic progenitor cells, induction of their lineage-specific differentiation, functional activation of mature lymphocytes, the activation and regulation of innate and adaptive immune responses, as well as the selective induction of apoptosis.


Cytokines representing only a small number of protein families are crucial in these physiological processes, the regulation of which is important in many areas of disease management.


The significance of their regulatory roles is illustrated by the frequency with which cytokines and soluble cytokine receptors find application as therapeutic drugs. Protein drugs in these classes include erythropoietin (EPO), granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF), interferon (IFN)-α, IFN-β, human growth hormone (HGH) and ENBREL.


Over the past decade, many new 'orphan' members of cytokine and cytokine receptor families have been discovered through homology-based gene-sequence mining approaches. Such orphan genes have no biological annotation at the time of discovery and present a formidable challenge to elucidate function.


Advances in ligand/receptor pairing techniques have led to a recognition that systematic pairing of 'orphan' database-derived cytokines and/or cytokine receptors with their binding partners can lead to a marked acceleration in the elucidation of biological function. The tissue distribution of a receptor, and the biological activity of a ligand, can direct investigators rapidly towards regulatory function. The power of cytokine–receptor pairing to accelerate the understanding of function is illustrated with examples of candidate drug discoveries. Several of these discoveries, resulting from cytokine/receptor pairings, are currently advancing towards human clinical evaluation.



TI - Cytokine–receptor pairing: accelerating discovery of cytokine function
JF - Nature Reviews Drug Discovery
DO - 10.1038/nrd1305
DA - 2004-02-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/cytokine-receptor-pairing-accelerating-discovery-of-cytokine-function-Tk49RL7kbv
SP - 160
EP - 170
VL - 3
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -