Therapeutic potential of targeting the complement cascade in critical care medicine

Caring for the critical care patient involves many different areas of clinical expertise and serves a diverse patient population. Novel therapeutics for the critically ill must be approached with caution, because the underlying molecular mechanisms of the disease process for several commonly seen types of patients (i.e., sepsis, shock, ischemia/reperfusion) are not fully understood. A potentially new and advancing area of therapeutics that may hold promise for the critically ill is inhibition of the complement system. Various novel complement inhibitors are being developed and several are in clinical trials. The advancement of this novel area of therapeutics may one day aid the clinician by providing several different complement inhibitors/antagonists for controlling complement activation or its biologically active mediators.