Review Article Immune Homeostasis in Epithelial Cells: Evidence and Role of Inflammasome Signaling Reviewed

Copyright © 2015 Paul M. Peeters et al.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The epithelium regulates the interaction between the noxious xenogenous, as well as the microbial environment and the immune system, not only by providing a barrier but also by expressing a number of immunoregulatorymembrane receptors, and intracellular danger sensors and their downstream effectors. Amongst these are a number of inflammasome sensor subtypes, which have been initially characterized in myeloid cells and described to be activated upon assembly into multiprotein complexes by microbial and environmental triggers. This review compiles a vast amount of literature that supports a pivotal role for inflammasomes in the various epithelial barriers of the human body as essential factors maintaining immune signaling and homeostasis. 1