Advances in research of the inflammatory response: the importance of toll-like receptors.

The innate immune system provides the first line of defence against invading pathogens. Cells that mediate the innate immune response express a variety of receptors that permit recognition of pathogen-associated motifs, subsequently resulting in a cascade of responses that initiates inflammation. Recently, the members of the Toll-like receptor family (TLR) have emerged as key receptors responsible not only for the detection of a variety of microbial cell-wall components and bacterial DNA but also for the initiation of signal transduction events eventually leading to the production of various proinflammatory mediators.