Published online Feb 26, 2014. doi: 10.4331/wjbc.v5.i1.12
Revised: December 11, 2013
Accepted: January 6, 2014
Published online: February 26, 2014
Processing time: 160 Days and 13.8 Hours
Interferon production is an important defence against viral replication and its activation is an attractive therapeutic target. However, it has long been known that viruses perpetually evolve a multitude of strategies to evade these host immune responses. In recent years there has been an explosion of information on virus-induced alterations of the host immune response that have resulted from data-rich omics technologies. Unravelling how these systems interact and determining the overall outcome of the host response to viral infection will play an important role in future treatment and vaccine development. In this review we focus primarily on the interferon pathway and its regulation as well as mechanisms by which respiratory RNA viruses interfere with its signalling capacity.
Core tip: Many novel regulators of innate immune signalling pathways, such as the interferon signalling pathway, have been discovered recently. These advances may be in part attributed to high-throughput systems biology techniques including genomic, proteomic, miRNA and siRNA screens, as well as through various confirmatory methods using quantitative polymerase chain reaction, microscopy, and animal models. Collectively, these studies have provided insights into novel drug targets that could boost host innate immunity or could potentially serve as broad-spectrum anti-virals against RNA respiratory viruses.