The Role of Atypical Chemokine Receptor CCXCKR (CCRL1) in Human Diseases

The role of chemokines and their receptors have been identified in many biological activities such as immune response and angiogenesis; however, their regulatory ways are under investigation. In recent years, homologous proteins’ typical chemokine receptors have been identified. Despite the structural similarity due to changes in a particular motif, they are not able to create signals through G proteins within the cell; therefore, these chemokine receptors are called silent or unusual. Through binding and internalization and degradation of the chemokines, these receptors regulate the level of ligand in the environment. In this paper, about fifty articles published in the field of the regulatory role of CCX-CKR receptor in some human diseases such as cancer and inflammatory diseases were reviewed. CCX-CKR is one of the chemokine binding proteins that like other silent chemokine receptors, is not able to induce intracellular signaling pathways. Since chemokine network plays a major role in many diseases such as cancer and autoimmune diseases through the impact of CCX-CKR on the level of chemokine environment, preventing intracellular signal creation by these proteins can be considered as a therapeutic target.