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The Role of Caspase-1 Played in the Process of Inflammation and Programmed Cell Death
Hao-Chen Wu, Yong-Jun Chen, Yi-Chen Xu, Ping-Ping Shen*
State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
Abstract: The caspases constitute a family of cysteinyl aspartate proteases. Caspase-1 is the first one found in mammalian cells， which is closely related to apoptosis. However， caspase-1 plays a central role in inflammation through processing pro-IL-1β and pro-IL-18 when activated by inflammasome in the presence of microbes or endogenous danger signals. Moreover， it can mediate proinflammatory programmed cell death， named “pyroptosis”， then fights with exogenous and endogenous stimulus， contributing to protect the host. Dysfunction of caspase-1 is closely related with many diseases.
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