Furci Fabiana, Murdaca Giuseppe, Pelaia Corrado, Imbalzano Egidio, Pelaia Girolamo, Caminati Marco, Allegra Alessandro, Senna Gianenrico, Gangemi Sebastiano
Allergy Unit and Asthma Center, Verona University Hospital, 37134 Verona, Italy.
Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, School and Operative Unit of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, University of Messina, 98125 Messina, Italy.
Biomedicines. 2023 Feb 2;11(2):437. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines11020437.
The airway epithelium, through pattern recognition receptors expressed transmembrane or intracellularly, acts as a first line of defense for the lungs against many environmental triggers. It is involved in the release of alarmin cytokines, which are important mediators of inflammation, with receptors widely expressed in structural cells as well as innate and adaptive immune cells. Knowledge of the role of epithelial cells in orchestrating the immune response and mediating the clearance of invading pathogens and dead/damaged cells to facilitate resolution of inflammation is necessary to understand how, in many chronic lung diseases, there is a persistent inflammatory response that becomes the basis of underlying pathogenesis. This review will focus on the role of pulmonary epithelial cells and of airway epithelial cell alarmins, in particular thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) and high mobility group box 1 (HMGB1), as key mediators in driving the inflammation of chronic lung diseases, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), evaluating the similarities and differences. Moreover, emerging concepts regarding the therapeutic role of molecules that act on airway epithelial cell alarmins will be explored for a precision medicine approach in the context of pulmonary diseases, thus allowing the use of these molecules as possible predictive biomarkers of clinical and biological response.
气道上皮通过跨膜或细胞内表达的模式识别受体，作为肺部抵御多种环境触发因素的第一道防线。它参与警报素细胞因子的释放，这些细胞因子是炎症的重要介质，其受体在结构细胞以及固有免疫和适应性免疫细胞中广泛表达。了解上皮细胞在协调免疫反应、介导入侵病原体和死亡/受损细胞的清除以促进炎症消退中的作用，对于理解在许多慢性肺部疾病中如何存在持续的炎症反应并成为潜在发病机制的基础是必要的。本综述将重点关注肺上皮细胞和气道上皮细胞警报素的作用，特别是胸腺基质淋巴细胞生成素（TSLP）和高迁移率族蛋白B1（HMGB1），作为驱动慢性肺部疾病（如哮喘和慢性阻塞性肺疾病（COPD））炎症的关键介质，评估它们的异同。此外，将探索关于作用于气道上皮细胞警报素的分子的治疗作用的新观念，以便在肺部疾病的背景下采用精准医学方法，从而使这些分子有可能用作临床和生物学反应的预测生物标志物。
