Damage-associated molecular pattern

Damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs), also known as danger-associated molecular patterns and danger signals, are host biomolecules that can initiate and perpetuate a noninfectious inflammatory response. In contrast, pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) initiate and perpetuate the infectious pathogen-induced inflammatory response. A subset of DAMPs are nuclear or cytosolic proteins. When released outside the cell or exposed on the surface of the cell following tissue injury, they move from a reducing to an oxidizing milieu, which results in their denaturation. Also, following necrosis (a kind of cell death), tumor DNA is released outside the nucleus, and outside the cell, and becomes a DAMP.

Two papers appearing in 1994 presaged the deeper understanding of innate immune reactivity, dictating the subsequent nature of the adaptive immune response. The first came from transplant surgeons who conducted a prospective randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial. Administration of recombinant human superoxide dismutase (rh-SOD) in recipients of cadaveric renal allografts demonstrated prolonged patient and graft survival with improvement in both acute and chronic rejection events. They speculated that the effect was related to its antioxidant action on the initial ischemia/reperfusion injury of the renal allograft, thereby reducing the immunogenicity of the allograft and the "grateful dead" or stressed cells. Thus free radical-mediated reperfusion injury-was seen to contribute to the process of innate and subsequent adaptive immune responses.

The second suggested the possibility that the immune system detected "danger", through a series of what we would now call damage associated molecular pattern molecules (DAMPs), working in concert with both positive and negative signals derived from other tissues. Thus these two papers together presaged the modern sense of the role of DAMPs and redox reviewed here, important apparently for both plant and animal resistance to pathogens and the response to cellular injury or damage. Although many immunologists had earlier noted that various "danger signals" could initiate innate immune responses, the "DAMP" was first described by Seong and Matzinger in 2004.

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