Toll样受体信号转导通路在器官移植中的作用

器官移植已成为治疗终末期器官衰竭患者的主要手段,为避免术后排斥反应的发生和发展,患者术后需终生服用大量免疫抑制药物.尽管免疫抑制剂的应用有效地预防了急性排斥反应的发生,但其在实体器官移植患者中仍有引起潜在严重并发症的可能.此外,尽管长期服用免疫抑制药物,大多数移植患者仍会因急性或慢性移植物损伤引起移植器官功能障碍.虽然...

Roles of toll-like receptors signaling in organ transplantation

Organ transplantation is the gold standard of treatment for patients with end-stage organ failure. However, transplant recipients must take immunosuppressive drugs lifelong to fight against rejection, which is inevitably caused by the recipient's immune system in response to transplanted foreign tissues. Despite advances in the prevention of acute rejection, it is still a significant and potentially devastating complication of solid organ transplantation. Moreover, chronic allograft dysfunction as a result of acute and chronic alloimmune-mediated injury still develops in a majority of transplant recipients regardless of continuous immunosuppression. While host adaptive immune responses elicited by T lymphocytes are primarily responsible for allotransplant rejection, emerging evidence supports an important role of the innate immune system in the development of organ rejection. Innate immune recognition is initiated by a set of diverse receptors that belong to different protein families including the family of toll-like receptors (TLRs). TLR signaling is a highly specialized system that can identify a variety of microbial and endogenous mediators, and activate the innate immune system in response to danger. The discovery of TLRs over the past 10 years has started a new era in understanding the molecular events that initiate and regulate the inflammatory response following organ transplantation. They influence the adaptive immune reactions and contribute to ischemic reperfusion injury, acute and chronic allograft rejection, and tolerance induction. Their role as potential targets for therapeutic intervention has just begun to be appreciated. In this article, we summarize the structural and functional characteristics of TLRs and their ligands. We focus on the studies to define the roles of TLRs in ischemic reperfusion injury, allotransplant rejection, and immune regulation in both animal models and clinical transplantation.