Preface: NF-κB, immune system and chronic diseases: How are they linked?

摘要

NF-kB was first discovered by Ranjan Sen and David Baltimore in 1986 as a factor/protein found in the nucleus of the B cells and which binds to the enhancer of the kappa chain of immunoglobulin, thus named nuclear factor kappa B. Today NF-kB has almost 55,000 citations. NF-kB is present in every cell type of the body and conserved all the way from Drosophila to man. Over 500 different genes have been shown to possess NF-KB-binding sites in their promoter region which control the expression of proteins linked to a variety of cell signaling pathways including those linked to transformation, cell survival, proliferation, invasion, angiogenesis, metastasis, and inflammation (www.nf-kb.org).