Abstract
Accumulating evidence indicates that members of a novel supergene family, chemokines, play a central role in the establishment of various types of inflammatory reactions by recruiting and activating a specific type(s) of leukocytes. We have established the essential role of interleukin-8 in several types of neutrophil-mediated acute inflammatory models in rabbits by injecting a highly potent neutralizing monoclonal antibody to IL-8. Here, we discussed our two approaches to develop a novel type of anti-inflammatory agents targeting IL-8; humanization of the monoclonal antibody by complementary determining region grafting method and identification of an inducible IκBα protein kinase which is essentially involved in NF-κB-mediated IL-8 gene transcription.
