Why inflammation is a compelling, but complex, drug target

This week’s canakinumab news cast an exciting new light on inflammation and the role it can play in many different diseases. The CANTOS study showed that the drug could reduce the recurrence of cardiovascular complications by 15 percent and also cut down on incidence of lung cancer. 
But that study had some drawbacks: As predicted, canakinumab increased the users’ risk for serious infection — because anti-inflammatory drugs, by definition, put a damper on the immune response. 
So although inflammation is implicated in myriad other diseases — from autism to Alzheimer’s disease to AIDS — it’s difficult to target any of those conditions with a simple anti-inflammatory approach.
“The problem is, if you block inflammation, you’re blocking a primordial mechanism by which we are protected from the organisms that share the planet with us,” one researcher told us.