Chemokine neutralization as an innovative therapeutic strategy for atopic dermatitis

Atopic dermatitis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease with no specific treatment, affecting 15-30% of children and 2-10% of adults in developed countries. Current therapies alleviate symptoms and include emollients, glucocorticoids and calcineurin inhibitors. The limited efficiency and side-effects of these medicines call for better treatment, and a cure for atopic dermatitis represents an unmet medical need. The chemokine/chemokine-receptor network constitutes an attractive target for drugs in atopic dermatitis. However, the highly intricate nature of the chemokine network makes it difficult to identify a clear receptor to target. After a short description of atopic dermatitis and its current therapies, this review presents the current knowledge of the chemokine/chemokine-receptor system role in the regulation of inflammatory cell recruitment into the skin. We discuss the limitations of classical chemokine receptor blockade and introduce the concept of neutralization of chemokine ligands. This strategy represents a potential breakthrough in developing therapeutic agents to treat atopic diseases.