The Value of the Cytokinome Profile

Abstract

Many scientific articles describe the pathogenesis of diseases that afflict the modern man (cancer, diabetes, obesity, degenerative diseases, etc.) as a slow common inflammatory process that is the basis of all these diseases. Therefore, we commonly speak of chronic inflammatory diseases (Allavena et al., 2008). The basis of this statement are the numerous experimental observations which show that these diseases are driven, from the earliest moments, by exchange between cells of tissues and organs of molecules that operate as messengers. These molecules, carrying biological messages of great importance, inform and lead a complex system of different cell types on what happens and towards which physiological and metabolic changes they are being carried. The chemical nature of these signaling molecules is diverse, but a group of them, the cytokines, is among the most important and studied inter-cellular messengers (Germano et al., 2008). We know the biological meaning of the signal of many of them, thus we can generally divide these molecules into two major classes: pro-inflammatory cytokines and anti-inflammatory cytokines. They are small proteins, quite numerous, more than about 100, expressed in very low amounts (pico and nano molar) and often short-lived, to cover specific information needs (Macarthur et al., 2004). The cells recognize these signals through appropriate receptors placed on their external membranes. However their study had some limitations due to the fact that (i) only those more abundant were studied, even if with very sensitive assays based on use of antibodies and fluorescence (ELISA); (ii) the receptors show pleiotropy, i.e. they have good affinity for various cytokines and hence the message can be brought by different cytokines; (iii) the biological significance of the message is known only for some of them, for example, it is not known which is the biological meaning carried out by the under-represented cytokines (the less concentrated ones at phenotypic level) and if the different messages are recognized by the receptor as only redundant or with diverse biological content (Colvin et al., 2004; Costantini et al., 2009; Trotta et al., 2009).