Study focuses on immune responses

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Study focuses on immune responses

BYU research: Date could have implications for treating of ailments

such as MS and cancer

By Greg Lavine

The Salt Lake Tribune

New knowledge of what can trigger a response from the human immune

system could have implications for treating ailments from multiple

sclerosis to cancer.

Chemists at Brigham Young University helped discover how certain

types of bacteria appear to spark the immune system into action. The

recent research has uncovered what parts of bacteria prompt the immune

system to attack, namely by affecting white blood cells known as

natural killer T cells, said BYU's Savage.

" The implications are tremendous, " said Savage, who is an author on

a study appearing in today's edition of the science journal Nature. " It

opens up a whole new area of immunology. "

Natural killer T cells are like conductors in an orchestra with

other T cells acting as musicians. Certain bacteria types set the

conductor to work, which in turn strikes up the band.

In some diseases - such as multiple sclerosis, lupus and rheumatoid

arthritis - natural killer T cells orchestrate an unneeded immune

response involving T cells. Learning what specifically kick-starts the

unnecessary immune-system attack could lead to treatment options.

Knowing how to turn on and off an immune response would help people

with underactive or overactive immune systems, Savage said. Viruses,

fungi and parasites also cause immune-system responses.

The BYU professor and several graduate students worked to

synthesize the antigens, or molecular pieces, that cause the immune

system to react. The antigens were taken from a common class of

bacteria known as alpha-proteobacteria.

Scientists at the University of Chicago; the Scripps Research

Institute, La Jolla, Calif., and the University of Texas Medical

Branch, Galveston, were involved with testing those compounds in mice

as well as in human cells.

Savage said these special bacteria can only live inside human cells,

which makes them difficult to detect in hospitals. Traditional bacteria

tests would not find these alpha-proteobacteria since they would not

grow in the testing environment provided.

This research could give doctors a reason to go back and use

different tests to find these bacteria in patients with certain

auto-immune problems. These bacteria could be potentially involved in

causing some auto-immune diseases.

In addition to providing new ways to look at patients with theses

diseases, the study could contribute ideas for preventing such medical

problems, he said. Vaccines using antigens, as opposed to the entire

pathogen, or microorganism, might provide stronger or longer immune

system responses in patients when needed.

Albert Bendelac, a professor of pathology at the University of

Chicago, said the research also has implications for cancer. Some

antigens prompt a body to reject a tumor. If researchers can learn what

specifically causes the body to fight a tumor, it could provide new

treatment avenues.

Future research could focus on other potential bacteria that trigger

natural killer T cells into moving the immune system from surveillance

mode to an inflammatory response against an invader.

" We don't know how many of them could involve the natural killer T

cells, " said Bendelac, another author on the study.

Researchers in California - including another group at the Scripps

Research Institute - New York and Japan were pursuing a similar line

of research and published their own natural killer T cell study in

today's Nature.

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2619956

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