ABOVE: Once activated, the NLRP3 inflammasome (illustrated) triggers a suite of pathways that may play an important role in many different diseases.
ARTWORK REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION FROM PROFESSOR KATE SCHRODER, THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND
Every morning of his life, no matter what he did, a young British man woke up with a fever, a headache, a rash on his trunk and limbs, joint pain, and ever-worsening deafness. His doctors had diagnosed him with a rare illness called Muckle-Wells syndrome, in which chronic inflammation rages out of control; no treatment had been able to cure his symptoms.
Then, in 2001, researchers in California discovered the genetic explanation for his disease: a mutation in a gene called CIAS1 (since renamed NALP3 and then NLRP3), which was later found to cause the resulting protein to be constantly activated. Around the same time, a group of scientists at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland found ...
