(ANSA) – ROME, FEBRUARY 10 – They are a well-established diagnostic tool, but their level in the blood also has great prognostic value for many diseases, inflammatory or autoimmune. These are the molecules of innate immunity, at the center of a review curated by Alberto Mantovani, scientific director of Humanitas and by Cecilia Garlanda, head of the Experimental Immunopathology laboratory of Humanitas. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (Nejom), takes stock of the knowledge of this class of molecules and the potential they offer.
The first molecules of innate immunity were isolated almost a century ago and today they are used in clinics as diagnostic and prognostic indicators of inflammation: their level in the blood, for example, makes it possible to measure the inflammatory state and predict the evolution of the disease . Thanks to the research conducted in recent decades, and in particular to some studies carried out by researchers at the IRCCS Istituto Clinico Humanitas, we now know that these molecules, once activated by encountering a pathogen, play a leading role: they fight the infection, recognizing the intruder, signaling it and hindering its action as “primitive antibodies”, and coordinate tissue regeneration”.
“We felt it was important to share all the knowledge on the molecules of our first line of defense for the benefit of doctors and future generations of clinicians, who find themselves using them for diagnosis and therapy, sometimes without having full perception of their potential – explains Mantovani -.
In fact, the molecules of innate immunity are the protagonists of some important defense actions when the body is under inflammatory attack, such as in sepsis or in the case of major traumas, but also in neurodegenerative or autoimmune diseases”.
“The research data of recent years – underlines Garlanda – tell us that these molecules can do much more as therapeutic targets still largely unexplored”.
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