The attraction of chemokines as a target for specific anti-inflammatory therapy.

Since the identification of the first chemotactic cytokines 20 years ago, the field has mushroomed, with the discovery of approximately 40 ligands, which interact with 20 different cell surface receptors. At the time of writing this review, a PubMed trawl using the word 'chemokine' will recover over 28,000 manuscripts. In this article, we will give a short history of the discovery of chemokines and provide examples of the potential for therapeutic targeting of the chemokine network in inflammatory disease.