Abstract 1096 New tools for studying caspase biology

Caspases are a family of cysteine proteases that act as molecular scissors to cleave substrates and regulate biological processes such as programmed cell death and inflammation. Extensive efforts have been made to identify caspase substrates and to determine factors that dictate substrate specificity. We recently discovered that that the human inflammatory caspases all cleave the cytokines IL-1b and IL-18 in a sequence-dependent manner. Here, we report the development of a new peptide-based probe and inhibitor based on the sequence of IL-18 (LESD) that is recognized by inflammatory caspases.