Functional Category
Immune Modulators
Last updated
Compounds that alter the host's own immune response: the maturation and activity of T cells, cytokine signalling, and the balance between inflammation and its resolution. The thymic peptides are the oldest members, which is why thymic resolves here. Modulation runs in both directions, so damping an overactive response counts as much as lifting a weak one.
Why it matters here
Modulator is deliberately directionless, so on a compound record it matters which direction the cited study reported and in which population; the same molecule can appear as raising a response in one paper and suppressing it in another.
What it is not
Not the same shelf as Antimicrobial & Antiviral, and the split is deliberate: an antiviral acts on the pathogen and an immune modulator acts on you. Evidence that a compound shifts an immune marker is not evidence that it shortens an infection.
Also called
- immune
- immunomodulator
- immune modulation
- thymic
Thymic resolves here because several members come from the thymus gland. It names a source organ, not a mechanism, and not every immune modulator is thymic.
Compounds carrying this term
None on file yet. This term is in the controlled vocabulary but no compound record currently uses it — which is a statement about our coverage, not about the term.