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A consortium of international researchers claims to have identified a protein that plays a major role in weakening the immune system.
The team of German, Swiss, Australian, American and Israeli researchers, led by Professor Dietmar Zehn of the Technological University of Munich, said the protein they've identified, called TOX, is responsible for depletion and non-responsiveness. in T cells, a group of white blood cells that play a key role in the immune system.
The main task of the immune system is to defend the body against viruses, cancer cells and other pathogens. T cells recognize and target specific cells throughout the body that need to be removed. They are bodyguards and can usually eliminate such threats as influenza, chicken pox and other diseases within a few days.
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Sometimes, however, infections persist for several months, causing chronic diseases. It is badumed that the same goes for cancer. This puts tremendous pressure on the immune system, which on the one hand actively strives to eliminate these threats while also limiting its own activity so as not to cause collateral damage to healthy cells, Chronic inflammation or autoimmune diseases. Thus, T cells often enter a state of exhaustion, which slows down their activity and they fail to completely get rid of the disease that the body is fighting, for example in the case of a cancer.
Cyrille Cohen, Cancer Immunologist at the Faculty of Life Sciences Mina and Everard Goodman of Bar-Ilan University (courtesy of the author)
Scientists have speculated that reversing this state of exhaustion could help restore the proper functioning of the immune system. The 2018 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to researchers James Allison and Tasuku Honjo, who discovered "molecular brakes" in T cells that force them to burn out.
Until now, however, the general mechanisms that orchestrate this "burnout" have remained a mystery, said the international consortium of researchers in a statement announcing their discovery.
In an article published Monday in the journal Nature, scientists say they have clarified for the first time part of this mechanism, identifying the protein TOX.
"Through this international collaboration, we have demonstrated that TOX protein is an important regulator of the state of T-cell depletion," said Professor Cyrille Cohen, immunologist of cancer at the Faculty of Science of Mina and Everard Goodman's life of Bar-Ilan University. who participated in the study. "This protein, when active in T cells, is able to drive them into a state of severe non-reactivity."
Cohen has studied this phenomenon in human cells in a melanoma model, successfully demonstrating a link between the expression of TOX in T cells and the generation of hyporeactivity, or decreased response to cancer.
The study could provide researchers with a better understanding of how T cells are repressed and help them unleash their potential for fighting chronic diseases, the scientists said in a statement.
"Now, with this information in hand, we can think about how to neutralize some of these barriers in order to restore the normal functioning of the immune system, even in chronic diseases, to better fight against cancer or viral diseases", said Cohen in a statement. declaration.
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