Immunology of VIP: A review and therapeutical perspectives

Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) is a neuropeptide with a broad distribu tion in the body that exerts very important pleiotropic functions in severa l systems. The present work reviews the immunology of VIP. Being daring, th is neuropeptide could be included in the group of cytokines since it is pro duced and secreted by different immunocompetent cells in response to variou s immune signals, plays a broad spectrum of immunological functions, and ex erts them, in a paracrine and/orautocrine way, through three different spec ific receptors. Although VIP has been classically considered as an immunode pressant agent, and its main described role has been as an anti-inflammator y factor, several evidences suggest that a better way to see this peptide i s as a modulator of the homeostasis of the immune system. In the last decad e, the pharmacology of VIP has spectacularly grown, and VIP itself, as well as more stable VIP-derived agents, have been used or proposed as efficient therapeutical treatments of several disorders, specially inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, such as septic shock, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple s clerosis, Crohn's disease and autoimmune diabetes. A broad field of perspec tives is actually open, and further investigations will help us to definiti vely understand the immunology of this "very important peptide".