All articles tagged with #immune tolerance
Scientists have discovered that a small subset of maternal immune cells persist in offspring throughout life, actively maintaining immune tolerance to maternal cells and potentially influencing various health conditions, including autoimmune diseases, cancer, and neurological disorders.
The study reveals that thymic epithelial cells amplify epigenetic noise independently of AIRE, primarily through AT-rich sequences, leading to increased plasticity and ectopic gene expression. This chromatin destabilization is regulated by p53 activity, which suppresses accessibility noise and limits cellular plasticity, thereby maintaining immune tolerance. Enhancing p53 activity reduces this plasticity, but can also cause autoimmunity, and similar mechanisms are observed in cancer models, linking chromatin noise, p53 regulation, and cell fate stability.
An "inverse vaccine" approach using ANK-700, which teaches the immune system not to attack specific targets, has shown promise in reducing disease activity in mouse models of multiple sclerosis (MS). The vaccine works by inducing immune tolerance, preventing the immune system from attacking the myelin sheath in the brain and spinal cord. ANK-700 is currently being tested in early clinical trials for MS treatment, with the potential to provide disease control without impairing the immune system's ability to defend against infections.
The protein DDX39B is a master regulator of immune tolerance and helps to control the development of immune cells that are key for this process, according to a new study. Activating DDX39B with small molecules might be a viable strategy for treating autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS), where the immune tolerance process is disrupted. The study also found that DDX39B changes the expression of genes considered to be MS risk factors, suggesting that DDX39B may itself affect the risk of MS or other autoimmune diseases.