Therapeutic targets in inflammatory disease.

This commentary is an introduction to a special issue on "Latest Developments in the Treatment of Inflammation". It outlines some key events in the inflammatory response to infection or injury and describes some of the important drug targets of relevance to the succeeding articles, which survey inhibitors of these targets as prospective or current antiinflammatory drugs. It also highlights important limitations in the validation of inflammatory drug targets, and in the rate of discovery and development of new antiinflammatory drugs.