From bench to bedside: Therapeutic potential of interleukin-9 in the treatment of asthma

Initially identified as a T cell and mast cell growth factor, interleukin (IL)-9 has long been recognized as an important mediator of asthma. Recently, accumulating results from transgenic mice demonstrated that systemic or lung-specific overexpression of IL-9 caused asthma-associated symptoms. Moreover, anti-mIL-9 antibody (Ab) blocking treatment alleviated disease in animal models of asthma. In light of the large quantity of data from the murine models, MEDI-528, a humanized anti-IL-9 monoclonal Ab has been produced to assess the activity of IL-9 on human asthma. In order to ascertain whether it is a successful translation from bench to bedside, the biological features of IL-9 were evaluated and up-to-date information regarding the role of IL-9 in different experimental murine models and human asthma were summarized.