Cell Reports reveal a new mechanism of influenza virus-induced bacterial co-infection

On May 18th, Liu Wenjun's research team from the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences published a research paper entitled "Induction of cyclophilin A by influenza A virus infection facilitates group A Streptococcus coinfection" in Cell Reports

The 1918 influenza pandemic caused more than 50 million deaths worldwide

The secondary bacterial co-infection of IAV is a very complicated process, which is the result of the interaction of virus, bacteria and host

CypA is a peptidyl-proline cis/trans isomerase involved in biological processes such as viral infection, protein folding, cell signal transduction, inflammation and tumorigenesis

The study found that CypA, which is significantly upregulated after IAV infection, can interact with focal adhesion kinase (FAK), inhibit the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway degradation of FAK mediated by E3 ligase cCbl, and positively regulate FAK/Akt The signal pathway enhances the expression of GAS adhesion receptor integrin α5 and the rearrangement of actin, thereby promoting the adhesion and invasion of GAS

At the same time, the study also found that the immunosuppressive drug CsA (also an inhibitor of CypA) can significantly inhibit IAV-GAS co-infection

Researcher Sun Lei and researcher Liu Wenjun of the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences are the co-corresponding authors of the paper.

Link to the paper: https://doi.