Single T Cell Population May Hold the Key to Targeted Treatments

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have found that a particular kind of white blood cell known as a regulatory T cell resides in the body as a single, massive population of cells that travel throughout it in search of and repair damaged tissue.

This challenges the conventional wisdom that states regulatory T cells are distributed throughout the body in various specialized populations. The discovery has ramifications for the management of numerous illnesses since nearly every illness and injury set off the immune system.

Anti-inflammatory medications available today target the entire body instead of just the area that is injured. According to the researchers, their findings suggest that they might be able to stop the immune system and fix damage in a particular area of the body without impacting the rest of it. This implies that medication could be administered to treat disease at higher, more focused dosages, possibly with quick effects.

We’ve uncovered new rules of the immune system. This ‘unified healer army’ can do everything - repair injured muscle, make your fat cells respond better to insulin, regrow hair follicles.  To think that we could use it in such an enormous range of diseases is fantastic: it’s got the potential to be used for almost everything.”

Adrian Liston, Professor and Study Senior Author, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge

The researchers examined the regulatory T cells found in 48 distinct mouse tissues to make this discovery. This demonstrated that cells are mobile throughout the body, going where they are required rather than being specialized or static. The journal Immunity published the results today.

It's difficult to think of a disease, injury, or infection that doesn’t involve some kind of immune response, and our finding changes the way we could control this response.”

Adrian Liston, Professor and Study Senior Author, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge

He added, “Now that we know these regulatory T cells are present everywhere in the body, in principle we can start to make immune suppression and tissue regeneration treatments that are targeted against a single organ – a vast improvement on current treatments that are like hitting the body with a sledgehammer.”

The researchers have demonstrated in mice that it is possible to draw regulatory T cells to a particular area of the body, multiply them, and activate them to suppress the immune system and encourage healing in that area of the body using a medication they have already created.

Liston said, “By boosting the number of regulatory T cells in targeted areas of the body, we can help the body do a better job of repairing itself, or managing immune responses.”

 “There are so many different diseases where we’d like to shut down an immune response and start a repair response, for example, autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, and even many infectious diseases,” Liston added.

The majority of symptoms associated with viruses like COVID-19 stem from the body's immune system targeting the virus rather than the virus itself. Regulatory T cells are supposed to turn off the body's immune response once the virus has passed its peak, but in certain individuals, this process is not very effective and can lead to persistent issues.

According to the new research, a medication may block the patient's pulmonary immune response while maintaining normal immune system function throughout the body.

Another example is that recipients of organ transplants have to take immunosuppressive medications for the rest of their lives to prevent organ rejection because the transplanted organ causes a strong immune response in the recipient's body.

However, this leaves them extremely susceptible to infections. The new discovery aids in the development of novel medications that block the immune system's attack on the transplanted organ alone, preserving normal bodily functions and allowing the patient to resume a normal life.

The majority of white blood cells use the immune system to fight infections within the body. Regulatory T cells, on the other hand, function as a “unified healer army,” whose mission is to stop this immune response after it has served its purpose and repair any tissue damage it may have caused.

The researchers are currently fundraising to establish a spin-out company that will conduct clinical trials to test their findings in humans within the next few years.