What Are Lymphokines?

A class of cytokines, hormone-like polypeptide substances produced by activated lymphocytes, do not have the structure of antibodies and cannot bind to antigens. Different lymphokines can show a variety of biological activities, which can act on the corresponding target cells and cause the target cells to change their characteristics or functions. Lymphocytes use lymphokines to affect adjacent or distant target cells. This is parallel to the role of antibodies and is a very important way to achieve immune effects and immune regulatory functions.

Lymphokine

A class of cytokines, hormone-like polypeptide substances produced by activated lymphocytes, do not have the structure of antibodies and cannot bind to antigens. Different lymphokines can show a variety of biological activities, which can affect the corresponding

Lymphokine

Lymphokines are rarely found in normal humans and animals, and are not easily detected or extracted from the body. Various lymphokines were originally found in lymphocyte culture supernatants cultured in vitro. This supernatant has a low concentration of lymphokines and can only be tested for its biological activity by in vitro tests. It has been reported since 1966 that there are nearly a hundred differently-named lymphokines, most of which lack the study of molecular structure, and are named and classified based on their biological activity. Although this has some practical significance, it is easy to cause confusion. . For example, substances with the same molecular structure can be called several factors with different names because of their different biological activities; sometimes, several substances with similar activities but different molecular structures will get the same name.

There are many types of lymphokines, so far only a few factors have been fully studied. The second International Conference on Lymphokines in 1979 decided to uniformly name the cytokines (including lymphokines) whose molecular structure has been clarified.

Lymphokines are products of lymphocytes and are used in various in vitro methods of cellular immunity for immunodiagnosis. Various biological activities of lymphokines may be used for immunotherapy, such as transfer factors and interferons that have been used clinically.