Definition of a Family of Tissue-Protective Cytokines Using Functional Cluster Analysis: A Proof-of-Concept Study.

The discovery of the tissue-protective activities of erythropoietin (EPO) has underlined the importance of some cytokines in tissue-protection, repair, and remodeling. As such activities have been reported for other cytokines, we asked whether we could define a class of tissue-protective cytokines. We therefore explored a novel approach based on functional clustering.