Caspase-11 Noncanonical Inflammasome: A Novel Key Player in Murine Models of Neuroinflammation and Multiple Sclerosis

Abstract

Inflammasomes are intracellular protein complexes consisting of the pattern recognition receptors and inflammatory molecules in the inflamed cells. In response to various ligands, inflammasomes play a pivotal role to execute the inflammatory responses by inducing the pyroptosis and the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines, interleukin (IL)-1β, and IL-18. Unlike canonical inflammasomes, including NOD-like receptor family inflammasomes, such as NLRP1, NLRP3, NLRC4, and absence in melanoma 2 inflammasomes, noncanonical inflammasomes, such as mouse caspase-11 and human caspase-4/5 were recently discovered, and their roles in the inflammatory responses have been poorly understood. However, emerging studies have been successfully demonstrating the regulatory roles of these noncanonical inflammasomes on inflammatory responses and the pathogenesis of inflammatory/autoimmune diseases. This review summarizes and discusses the recent studies investigating the regulatory roles of the caspase-11 noncanonical inflammasome in neuroinflammation and the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS), which provides the insight for the validation of caspase-11 noncanonical inflammasome to develop novel and promising therapeutics for MS.