Dr. Hongbo Chi Nature published an article: CRISPR-Cas9 technology analyzes the selective regulation of key immune cells

Dr.

The research team led by Professor Hongbo Chi from the St.

This discovery provides hope for the development of drugs that activate metabolic pathways, thereby improving the effectiveness of vaccines, including those that prevent COVID-19

This study, published in the journal Nature, laid the foundation for the development of drugs that can reduce this pathway and reduce autoimmune diseases such as lupus erythematosus

Professor Chi Hongbo, who led this research, is mainly engaged in the research on the signal and metabolic pathways of adaptive immunity mediated by T cells.

Regulates the adaptive immune response

Researchers have discovered a metabolic control pathway that can selectively regulate the development of specific immune cells in the adaptive immune system

The adaptive immune system is so named because when the body is infected by viruses or bacteria, it learns to target pathogens and attack them

In their experiments, the researchers tried to understand whether there is a metabolic control pathway that can modify Tfh to activate them

Key way

In order to discover a possible control pathway, Professor Chi Hongbo and others used CRISPR-Cas9 genetic technology to delete a variety of known enzymes in T cells, which are part of this metabolic control pathway

Their experiment revealed a metabolic control pathway, the cytidine diphosphate (CDP)-ethanolamine pathway, which can selectively regulate Tfh cells

"This discovery is very surprising," Professor Chi said.

As a complementary method to determine whether this pathway selectively regulates Tfh cells, the researchers deleted every key enzyme found in their CDP-ethanolamine pathway

Professor Chi said that it is important that these key enzymes may be the targets of drugs, which can enhance or inhibit this pathway, thereby increasing the activity of T cells

"We are now exploring whether we can enhance the effectiveness of vaccines by using drugs that activate this pathway, and help these T cells mobilize the immune system to produce antibodies and respond to the vaccine

"On the other hand, in order to treat autoimmune diseases, we are interested in developing new methods to inhibit this pathway.

Professor Chi said that researchers are still studying the structural mechanism of enzyme work, and these new insights can provide new drug targets

(Biocom)

Original title:

Metabolic control of TFH cells and humoral immunity by phosphatidylethanolamine
https://