[Anti-cytokines and anti-cytokine receptors].

Cytokines play a key-role in the immune response. The best known of them is interleukin-2 and its specific receptors. Monoclonal antibodies directed against the interleukin-2 receptor have initially enabled this receptor to be characterized; then they served to confirm the major role played by this cytokine in immune responses, where it proved effective in many animal models such as allograft reaction, delayed hypersensitivity reaction and some experimental auto-immune diseases. These results have been confirmed in man, particularly in kidney transplantation (but also in bone marrow transplantation), and they encourage to develop new bioreagents (chimeral antibodies, "humanized" antibodies, fusion proteins). Some of these reagents are now undergoing evaluation in renal transplantation. The principles of these bioreagents, issued from molecular biology, can be applied to other cytokines involved in the immunopathological mechanisms of certain diseases such as, for example, IL-6 and its role in the development of myeloma. Data from immune intervention directed against other cytokines are, for the moment, preliminary, but many potential targets (IL-1, IL-4, TNF alpha, INF gamma) are emerging.