An assembled molecular signaling map of interleukin-24: a resource to decipher its multifunctional immunoregulatory role in pathophysiological conditions.

Introduction: Interleukin-24 (IL-24) is a cytokine belonging to the IL-10 family with immunoregulatory properties. It is known to induce cellular responses in various disease conditions, including inflammatory, infectious diseases, and cancer, in a receptor-dependent and independent manner. IL-24 is induced by both immune and non-immune cells and acts on a vast array of target cells to regulate various biological processes. The antitumor and immunoregulatory properties of IL-24 support its application as a therapeutic agent in a vast array of pathological conditions. Characterizing the molecular events associated with its immunomodulatory properties is essential for evaluating its utility in cancer immunotherapy.

Methods: The data related to signaling events induced by IL-24 were then manually annotated and cataloged from the literature pertaining to IL-24 signaling. The cataloged molecular events were then manually drawn based on the topology as a signaling pathway map of IL-24.

Results: Based on the data mined from published literature, we assembled IL-24-regulated signaling events linked to its immunoregulatory and anti-tumor activities. The receptor-ligand interaction of IL-24 regulates multiple downstream signaling cascades, leading to antitumor activities alongside inducing inflammatory reactions and anti-infectious processes. We provide a signaling pathway map of IL-24 consisting of 433 mRNAs/proteins and their 613 signaling events.

Discussion: We believe this map would serve as a knowledge base for reference and one-go visualization of the signaling events identified to be induced by IL-24. Moreover, this map is made available (https://ciods.in/il24/) for the researchers to explore the role of IL-24 in various pathophysiological conditions through the gene set enrichment of transcriptomics or proteomics datasets from various disease conditions.