Autoregulation of immune responses via idiotype network interactions

Abstract

The concept that idiotypes may play a major role in regulating immune responses suggests that the significance of idiotypes in immunobiology may exceed their use as convenient tools to study molecular and cellular processes. If immunoregulation within an individual can function via idiotype-anti-idiotype interactions, this process could have an impact equal to that of clonal selection on our understanding of the immune system. The role of this regulatory system in formulating strategies for treating numerous immunological disorders could be tremendously important. This paper focuses on recent data which argue strongly that idiotype regulation may be a real component of most immune responses, although some data presented can be interpreted as arguing against this idea.