Imgenex Corp. develops and commercializes novel reagents for the scientific study of human biology and disease and for the production of new diagnostic assays and potential therapies of such diseases. These novel reagents include antibodies, gene and protein expression systems, and arrays of various cells and tissues for use in studies of functional genomics. Areas of biological interest at IMGENEX include cancer, apoptosis (programmed cell death), molecular signaling pathways, cellular aging, and metabolic and infectious diseases.

Chemokines play important roles in inflammation and critical for the recruitment of effector immune cells to sites of infection. Chemokines activate leukocytes by binding to G protein coupled receptors (1). The ever-growing chemokine receptor subtypes can be divided into 2 major groups, CXCR and CCR, based on the 2 major classes of chemokines. One of the CCR receptors, CCR1, is expressed on neutrophils, monocytes, lymphocytes, and eosinophils and binds the leukocyte chemoattractant and hemopoiesis regulator macrophage-inflammatory protein (MIP-1 ), eotaxin, as well as several other related chemokines (2-4). Mice lacking the chemokine receptor CCR1 have defects in neutrophil trafficking and proliferation (5,6).