Journal
JOURNAL OF INNATE IMMUNITY
Volume 2, Issue 3, Pages 228-237Publisher
KARGER
DOI: 10.1159/000283688
Keywords
Apoptosis; Autoinflammatory diseases; Caspases; NLRs; Inflammation; Inflammasome
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Funding
- German Research Foundation [DFGYA-182/1-1]
- National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia
- Apo-Sys Consortium of the European Union
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Caspases are best known for their role in apoptosis. More recently, they have gained prominence as critical mediators of innate immune responses. The so-called 'inflammatory caspases' include human caspase-1, -4, -5 and -12 and murine caspase-1, -11 and -12. Of these, caspase-1 is best characterized and serves as the prototype for our understanding of the processing, activation and function of inflammatory caspases. Like their apoptotic counterparts, inflammatory caspases are produced as inactive zynnogens and require activation to become proteolytically active. Caspase-1 is activated within the inflammasome, a large cytosolic protein complex that is induced by a growing number of endogenous, microbial, chemical or environmental stimuli. The importance of caspase-1 in initiating innate immune responses is demonstrated by its role in cleaving pro-IL-13 and pro-IL-18 to their biologically active forms. New functions have also been implicated, as these proteases and the mechanisms underlying their activation and regulation emerge as important mediators of human health and disease. Copyright (C) 2010 S Karger AG, Basel
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