Engineering cytokine receptors to control cellular functions

Cytokine receptors function as an interface between a cell and the extracellular milieu, and play a pivotal role in cell fate, because they recognize specific ligands via their extracellular domain and trigger signal transduction via their intracellular domain. Recent advances in unraveling the mechanism of cytokine receptor-mediated signal transduction have allowed us to engineer cytokine receptors with distinct functions, which have a potential for use in biotechnology. This paper reviews the history and current topics of receptor engineering. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.