Investor Updates
Australian researchers discover immune system ‘kill switch’
7 January 2013
Australian researchers have discovered an immune system ‘kill switch’ that could be a target for chemotherapy and infection recovery.
The scientists, from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia, led a research team in this important discovery that could have implications for protecting the blood system during chemotherapy and in diseases associated with overwhelming infection.
The findings have recently been published in the prestigious international journal Immunity.
Researchers said that the immune system ‘kill switch’ is triggered when internal immune cell signals that protect the body from infection go haywire. The switch destroys blood stem cells when the body is under severe stress.
The team found that blocking these internal signals, in particular a cell receptor called NLRP1, could stop blood stem cells from self-destructing, preventing death after chemotherapy and boosting recovering from infection.
Dr Seth Masters said that NLRP1 is part of a family of immune receptors that acts as a protective mechanism, instructing immune and blood stem cells to die because it has ‘sensed’ infection or severe stress-related damage. ‘However this protective mechanism can go too far,’ Dr Masters said.
The research team is testing inhibitors of this pathway to treat severe infections, and has high hopes for its future use.
‘It is early days,’ said Dr Masters, ‘but we are optimistic that this is a pathway that could help to prevent blood cell death and treat severe cases of sepsis, as well as other conditions where blood stem cells are critically depleted, such as during chemotherapy.’
Support for this project has come from a number of sources including the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, the Australian Cancer Research Foundation, and the Government of the Australian state of Victoria.
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