Th17细胞免疫学基础以及临床研究进展

Th17作为近几年CD4^＋T辅助细胞亚群的新成员，在炎症反应中扮演了极其重要的角色。Th17主要存在于CD4^＋记忆细胞亚群中，其分泌的细胞因子IL-17具有强烈的促炎症作用，通过作用于上皮细胞、基质细胞等分泌大量的IL-8，介导中性粒细胞向炎症部位迁移，从而诱导炎症反应。虽然Th17的发现主要源于对动物及人类自身免疫系统疾病的研究，但越来越多的研究表明，Th17在感染免疫、移植免疫，以及肿瘤免疫过程中起到了举足轻重的作用。进一步的研究应该主要集中于对Th17细胞功能的研究以及通过Th17／IL-23等通路对各种疾病治疗的可行性探讨。

A brief history of Th17 in laboratory and clinical investigation

Being a new subset of CD4+ helper cells, Th17 plays an important role in inflammatory response. Th17 is mainly existed in CD4+ memory subsets. Its product, IL-17, is a cytokine with strong proinflammatory effects. Being activated by IL-17, epithelial and stromal cells secret large amount of IL-8 and then recruit neu-trophils to induce inflammation. Although Th17 is discovered in researches of autoimmune diseases from human and animals, more and more researches are showing that Th17 is also important in immune response under other situations, such as infection, transplantation and tumors. For further study, the function and clinical signifi-cance of Th17/IL-23 pathway should be addressed.