Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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T cell exhaustion

Stem-like CD8 T cells stay in lymph nodes/spleen

In a mouse model of chronic viral infection, there are very few virus-specific killer T cells in the blood, Emory Vaccine Center scientists report in a new paper in PNAS. This has implications for efforts to enhance cancer immunotherapy, because in both chronic viral infection and cancer, the same types of exhausted T cells accumulate.

CD8 T cells in lymphoid tissue (spleen) – from Im et al Nature (2016)

Vaccine Center director Rafi Ahmed’s lab has learned a great deal about exhausted T cells by studying the LCMV (lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus) model. In this situation, virus-specific CD8 T cells accumulate in lymph nodes and in other organs, without circulating in the blood, because they acquire a residency program, the PNAS authors write. Postdoc Sejin Im’s 2016 paper defined these “stem-like” cells – he is the first author of the new one as well.

A related phenomenon can be seen in the Kissick lab’s recent paper on immune “outposts” in kidney and other urologic tumors. The stem-like cells stay within the tumor and give rise to similar progeny. One consequence may be that treatments aimed at reactivating those cells need to get inside the tumor.

Posted on February 10, 2020 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment

Revived T cells still need fuel

Cancer immunotherapy drugs blocking the PD-1 pathway – known as checkpoint inhibitors – are now FDA-approved for melanoma, lung cancer and several other types of cancer. These drugs are often described as “releasing the brakes” on dysfunctional T cells.

A new study from Emory Vaccine Center and Winship Cancer Institute researchers shows that even if the PD-1-imposed brakes are released, the tumor-specific T cells still need “fuel” to expand in numbers and restore effective immune responses. That fuel comes from co-stimulation through a molecule called CD28.

The results were published Thursday by the journal Science.

Despite the success of PD-1-targeting drugs, many patients’ tumors do not respond to them. The study’s findings indicate that CD28’s presence on T cells could be a clinical biomarker capable of predicting whether drugs targeting PD-1 will be effective. In addition, the requirement for CD28 suggests that co-stimulation may be missing for some patients, which could guide the design of combination therapies.

For the rest of our press release and quotes from authors Rafi Ahmed, Alice Kamphorst and Suresh Ramalingam, please go here. For some additional links and thoughts on PD-1 and CD28, read on:

Read more

Posted on March 10, 2017 by Quinn Eastman in Cancer, Immunology Leave a comment

Dengue infection makes exhausted T cells?

An ongoing collaboration between the Emory Vaccine Center and the ICGEB (International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology) in New Delh, investigating immune responses to dengue virus, is getting some attention.

A Journal of Virology paper published by the collaboration was highlighted by Nature Asia. In that paper, the researchers show that in dengue infection, the group of antiviral immune cells known as CD8+ T cells undergoes a massive expansion. That could be dangerous if all of the CD8 T cells were making inflammatory cytokines, but they do not. Only a small fraction are making cytokines.

The authors point out that this phenomenon is “somewhat reminiscent of T-cell exhaustion seen under the conditions of prolonged antigenic stimulus in chronic viral infections [which has been studied in detail by Rafi Ahmed and colleagues] or closely resembles the ‘stunned’ phenotype reported in febrile phase of other acute infections such as HIV and viral hepatitis… The IFN-γ unresponsiveness acquired during the massive antigen-driven clonal expansion is likely to ensure that these cells do not cause excessive inflammation at the time that their numbers are high during the febrile phase of dengue disease.” Read more

Posted on October 25, 2016 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment

Are you experienced?

Are you experienced? Your immune system undoubtedly is. Because of vaccinations and infections, we accumulate memory T cells, which embody the ability of the immune system to respond quickly and effectively to bacteria or viruses it has seen before.

Not so with mice kept in clean laboratory facilities. Emory scientists think this difference could help explain why many treatments for sepsis that work well in mice haven’t in human clinical trials.

Screen Shot 2016-08-24 at 1.42.21 PM

Mandy Ford has teamed up with Craig Coopersmith to investigate sepsis, a relatively new field for her, and the collaboration has blossomed in several directions

“This is an issue we’ve been aware of in transplant immunology for a long time,” says Mandy Ford, scientific director of Emory Transplant Center. “Real life humans have more memory T cells than the mice that we usually study.”

Sepsis is like a storm moving through the immune system. Scientists studying sepsis think that it has a hyper-inflammatory phase, when the storm is coming through, and a period of impaired immune function afterwards. The ensuring paralysis leaves patients unable to fight off secondary infections.

In late-stage sepsis patients, dormant viruses that the immune system usually keeps under control, such as Epstein-Barr virus and cytomegalovirus, emerge from hiding. The situation looks a lot like that in kidney transplant patients, who are taking drugs to prevent immune rejection of their new organ, Ford says.

Ford’s team recently found that sepsis preferentially depletes some types of memory T cells in mice. Because T cells usually keep latent viruses in check, this may explain why the viruses are reactivated after sepsis, she says. Read more

Posted on August 24, 2016 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment