Danger associated molecular patterns (DAMPs)

Allergen are irritants, offenders or inflammatory agents. They can be pathogens, mutagens, xenobiotics, and pollutants.

Danger associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) are altered metabolism products of necrotic or stressed cell, which serve as alarm signals for the innate immune system.

When excess, DAMPs can prove lethal due to their signal transduction roles. 

Inflammatory agents as arthropod chitin, bacterial pneumolysin are DAMP triggers. In fact, any inflammatory agent, including food preservatives, cosmetics, pesticides, polluted air,  can lead to DAMP generation.

These generate DAMPs, which in turn create a pro-inflammatory state. Some well-studied DAMPs include uric acid, creatinine, ferritin, extracellular ATP, HSPs, amyloid ß, S100, HMGB1, and ECM proteins. ECM proteins as elastin, fibronectin, laminin, collagen have been identified as DAMPs.


The DAMPs such as S100 and chromogranin A are already known as cancer biomarkers, so other cancer markers such as a-fetoprotein (AFP), BCR-ABL, BRCA1/BRCA2, ß-2-microglobulin (B2M), human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), bladder tumor antigen (BTA), CA, calcitonin, carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), soluble mesothelin-related peptides (SMRP), immunoglobulins, free light chains, inhibin, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), neuron-specific enolase (NSE), nuclear Matrix Protein 22 (NMP22), prostate-specific antigen (PSA), thyroglobulin, and prostatic acid phosphatase (PAP) might be DAMPs as wells.

For more information, please read: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30267163/

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