Sabroe Ian, Parker Lisa C, Dower Steven K, Whyte Moira K B
Academic Unit of Respiratory Medicine, Section of Infection, Inflammation, and Immunity, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom.
Proc Am Thorac Soc. 2007 Dec;4(8):606-10. doi: 10.1513/pats.200707-086TH.
The challenges of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and the difficulties in modeling its pathology in vitro and in vivo are substantial. Integration of innate- and adaptive-type responses with processes of scarring and healing do not fit comfortably with some definitions of the immune system, and, instead, this disease is an exemplar of a network-based system that we have named "contiguous immunity." The complicated and highly interconnected networks underpinning many biological processes show features of scale-free networks. Consideration of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease pathology as a scale-free network showing features of contiguous immunity might, in the future, aid identification and targeting of potential key "hubs"-these being principal components of the disease network-manipulation of which may yield successful new therapies.
慢性阻塞性肺疾病面临的挑战以及在体外和体内模拟其病理过程的困难是巨大的。先天性和适应性反应与瘢痕形成和愈合过程的整合与免疫系统的某些定义不太相符，相反，这种疾病是我们称为“连续免疫”的基于网络系统的一个范例。支撑许多生物过程的复杂且高度相互连接的网络呈现出无标度网络的特征。将慢性阻塞性肺疾病的病理视为具有连续免疫特征的无标度网络，未来可能有助于识别和靶向潜在的关键“枢纽”——即疾病网络的主要组成部分，对其进行操控可能会产生成功的新疗法。
