A study of the immune system reaction to malaria could lead to radical new vaccines, researchers have reported.
A joint project involving British, European and Australian researchers has found a "network" of chemical interchanges that influence the specialisation of T cells, it was reported.
The researchers also found genes within T cells that may control antibody production during malaria infection.
The findings have been reported in Science Immunology and involved researchers at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK, the European Bioinformatics Institute and the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, Australia.
The researchers studied immune system development in immature mice.
The study pointed to a gene called Galectin 1 that encouraged the development of some kinds of T cell – and could be a target for drug development, the researchers say.
The researchers say the findings led them to dozens of new genes involved in the immune system.
Researcher Dr Ashraful Haque, from the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, said: “This is the first time that Galectin 1 acting inside T cells has been seen to influence Th1 fate, and has shown that Galectin 1 is a possible therapeutic target for malaria.
"An important next step will be to test many of the new gene targets identified by our studies, to see if they can be targeted by drugs to boost immunity to malaria.”
Researcher Dr Sarah Teichmann, from the Sanger Institute, said: “This is the first high resolution time-course of cells using a pathogen in mice, where we have used cutting edge genomics coupled with computational methods to reconstruct how cells evolve and develop over infection.
"With methods from machine learning, we have simplified really complex biological processes into something we can understand. This approach could be applied to resolve any biological developmental process.”
Tapio Lönnberg et al. Single-cell RNA-seq and computational analysis using temporal mixture modeling resolves TH1/TFH fate bifurcation in malaria. Science Immunology 3 March 2017; doi: 10.1126/sciimmunol.aal2192
Leave a Reply