TY  - EJOU
AU  - Damme, Jo Van 
AU  - Damme, Stijn Van 
AU  - Struyf, Soffe 
AU  - Opdenakker, Ghislain 

TI  - It’s in the blood: plasma as a source for biochemical identification and  biological characterization of novel leukocyte chemoattractants
T2  - European Cytokine Network

PY  - 2025
VL  - 36
IS  - 1
SN  - 1952-4005

AB  - Since their discovery, chemotactic cytokines or chemokines have been intensively studied for about half a century. Chemokines originate from tissue cells, leukocytes, blood platelets and plasma. Here, we review a number of seminal findings on plasma chemokines within an historical and international context. These aspects include how induction and purification protocols led to the discovery of a new family of mediators, named chemokines, on the basis of protein sequencing; how molecular cloning techniques facilitated discoveries of additional family members on the basis of conserved protein structures; how blood plasma and platelets were used as a source of inducible and constitutively expressed chemokines; how various forms of proteolytic reactions may convert precursor proteins into chemokines and either potentiate or inactivate their activity; how abundancy classes and synergism should be interpreted through critically considering plasma chemokine biology; and how other blood proteins, such as serum amyloid A, interact in functional terms with CXC and CC chemokines. The gradual dissection of all these elements not only reveals the complexity of chemokine actions, but also stimulates a more comprehensive interpretation of chemokine levels in plasma and serum, with future chemokinome analyses in mind.
KW  - plasma level
KW  -  chemokine
KW  -  leukocyte
KW  -  platelet
KW  -  inflammation
KW  -  regulated production
KW  -  synergy
KW  -  purification
KW  -  sequencing
KW  -  processing

DO  - 10.1684/ecn.2025.0501