Protein / target
Interleukin-4
Protein at a glance
Biological role
Interleukin-4 receptor binding
Strongest disease association
Ischemic Stroke
Therapeutic position
Clinically advancing target
Research activity
Emerging research
Derived from structured UniProt, Open Targets and literature data on this page.
Protein profile
Canonical identity and biological annotation from UniProt.
Function overview
Cytokine secreted primarily by mast cells, T-cells, eosinophils, and basophils that plays a role in regulating antibody production, hematopoiesis and inflammation, and the development of effector T-cell responses.
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Cytokine secreted primarily by mast cells, T-cells, eosinophils, and basophils that plays a role in regulating antibody production, hematopoiesis and inflammation, and the development of effector T-cell responses (PubMed:1993171, PubMed:3016727). Induces the expression of class II MHC molecules on resting B-cells. Enhances both secretion and cell surface expression of IgE and IgG1 (PubMed:1993171). Also regulates the expression of the low affinity Fc receptor for IgE (CD23) on both lymphocytes and monocytes (PubMed:2521231). Positively regulates IL31RA expression in macrophages. Stimulates autophagy in dendritic cells by interfering with mTORC1 signaling and through the induction of RUFY4. In addition, plays a critical role in higher functions of the normal brain, such as memory and learning (By similarity). Upon binding to IL4, IL4R receptor dimerizes either with the common IL2R gamma chain/IL2RG to produce the type 1 signaling complex, located mainly on hematopoietic cells, or with the IL13RA1 to produce the type 2 complex, which is also expressed on nonhematopoietic cells (PubMed:10219247, PubMed:11526337, PubMed:18243101). Engagement of both types of receptors initiates JAK3 and to a lower extend JAK1 phosphorylation leading to activation of the signal transducer and activator of transcription 6/STAT6 (PubMed:7721895)
Subcellular location
Domains and Gene Ontology detail (51)Hide
Gene Ontology
- Cextracellular region
- Cextracellular space
- Fcytokine activity
- Fgrowth factor activity
- Finterleukin-4 receptor binding
- PB cell differentiation
- Pcell surface receptor signaling pathway via JAK-STAT
- Pcholesterol metabolic process
- Pdendritic cell differentiation
- Pimmune response
- Pinterleukin-4-mediated signaling pathway
- Pmacrophage activation
Biological roles
What this protein does, drawn together from its UniProt function, Gene Ontology terms and Reactome pathways.
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Cell migration
- ·negative regulation of epithelial cell migration
- ·positive regulation of cell migration
Cell proliferation & survival
- ·positive regulation of cell population proliferation
Lipid & lipoprotein metabolism
- ·cholesterol metabolic process
Immune signalling
- ·Cytokine secreted primarily by mast cells, T-cells, eosinophils, and basophils that play…
- ·cytokine activity
- ·interleukin-4 receptor binding
- ·B cell differentiation
Transcriptional regulation
- ·Cytokine secreted primarily by mast cells, T-cells, eosinophils, and basophils that play…
- ·negative regulation of DNA-templated transcription
- ·negative regulation of transcription by RNA polymerase II
- ·positive regulation of DNA-templated transcription
Apoptosis & cell death
- ·negative regulation of apoptotic process
- ·negative regulation of endothelial cell apoptotic process
Concepts derived from UniProt GO Reactome — each badge above shows which sources supported that role.
Translational evidence
Why this target matters therapeutically, strongest evidence first. Disease associations are gene-level (via the gene that encodes this protein) and open into the full confidence synthesis; the development universe, tractability and safety annotations are target-level, from Open Targets.
Strongest disease associations · via encoding gene IL4
Gene-level evidence surfaced through the gene IL4that encodes this protein — not a direct protein–disease relationship. Ranked by Forefront's causal-directness weighting, so genetically- and clinically-evidenced diseases lead over ones that merely share the literature.
View evidence synthesis (5)Hide
This ranking differs from Open Targets' own: re-weighting moves genetically-evidenced diseases above more heavily co-mentioned ones. The evidence agreement range shows how closely the independent evidence families agree — it is not a statistical confidence interval, and nothing here is fitted to outcome data. Derived from Open Targets evidence types under Forefront weighting; the per-type scores above show the calculation.
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Drug development
2 compounds recorded · 2 in clinical development
View all recorded compounds (2)Hide
Open Targets known-drugs universe. Drug name and highest clinical stage only — the disease relationship is NOT read from this slice (it carries trial-context noise); approved indications come from the canonical graph above.
Tractability
Antibodies — Strong
View underlying tractability evidence (4)Hide
Raw Open Targets tractability assessment buckets, by modality.
Safety-related annotations
Terms indexed against this target in Open Targets' safety data, with their datasource. These are annotations, not causal claims: the direction of effect (whether activation or inhibition is implicated), species and evidence strength are not captured here, so an entry does not mean that modulating this target is known to cause that condition.
Research activity
Papers linked directly to this protein. This is the protein's own literature — descriptor-derived papers are kept separate below.
Most cited
Recent
Europe PMC papers linked directly to this protein.