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Cytokines and Viral Anti-Immune Genes

National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

Key Words. Anti-immune gene • Complement • Cytokine • Homolog • Interleukin • MHC gene presentation • Receptor decoy • Virus pirating of host defense genes

Dr. Charles H. Evans, Laboratory of Biology, National Cancer Institute, Building 37, Room 2A17, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892-4255, USA.

Cytokines, the pleomorphic and pleiotropic director proteins of an increasingly defined diversity of differentiation and growth, are potent modulators of immune function and homeostasis. The antiviral and immunostimulatory actions of cytokines, like the interferons, have also been recognized for many years. In more recent developments, virus genomes were discovered in 1990 to contain anti-immune genes that control the synthesis of host cell proteins that disarm immune defenses. Many of the virus anti-immune genes are directed against cytokines. Recent discoveries of cytokine homologs and cytokine receptor homologs, and other viral gene products that disarm host immune defenses, provide a molecular basis for improved understanding of virus diseases and new targets for development of innovative therapeutic approaches against viral, cancer and perhaps a number of other diseases.