Veterinary applications of cytokines

In the recent past a large variety of cytokines have been cloned for most important veterinary species and more is planned with development of a coordinated approach to cytokine reagents production. Application of these cytokines in veterinary species can be found in the development of effective diagnostics, with the IFN-γ-based detection of tuberculosis as a prime example. In addition, cytokines have been used to determine which immune responses are essential for immune protection with flow-on effects for the development of novel ways to induce these specific immune responses. The realisation that the murine immune system is quite different from the human, together with the increased availability of cytokine reagents for many large animals plus unique experimental approaches only available in these animals, has lead to an explosion in the use of veterinary species as models for human diseases.