Chinese Journal of Nature ›› 2021, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (1): 18-24.doi: 10.3969/j.issn.0253-9608.2021.01.003

• Review Article • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Structural and signaling mechanism of chemokine receptors

LIU Kaiwen, LIU Zhijie, HUA Tian   

  1. iHuman Institute, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China
  • Received:2021-10-01 Online:2021-02-25 Published:2021-02-25

Abstract: Chemokine and chemokine receptor play important roles in cell migration, proliferation and resisting invasion, thus closely related with multiple fundamental biological processes and disease development in immune environment, such as inflammation and cancer. There are more than 20 different chemokine receptors and nearly 50 chemokines in human body. One chemokine can bind multiple receptors and vice versa. Their interaction forms a complex chemokine regulatory network. Analysis of the three-dimensional structures of chemokines and their receptors will further improve our understanding of the activation mechanism and pharmacological functions of the chemokine receptor family. Here, we briefly review the solved structure of chemokine receptors bound with chemokine ligands or their analogs, and analyze the structure and activation mechanism of chemokine receptors, and indicate the importance of the anticancer drug development of chemokine receptor family.