With a trick of engineering, scientists at the Gladstone Institutes improved a potential weapon against inflammation and autoimmune disorders. Their work could one day benefit patients who suffer from inflammatory bowel disease or organ transplant rejection.
In the new study, published in Stem Cells Translational Medicine, the scientists engineered tiny sugar-based particles that they loaded with pro-inflammatory proteins and stuck into the middle of clusters of MSCs. The particles slowly delivered the inflammatory trigger to the cells in a steady dose. This method increased the amount of anti-inflammatory proteins produced by the MSCs, enhancing the suppression of immune cells. In short, the cell-protein packets worked better and longer than other treatments.
"No one has successfully used biomaterials to deliver pro-inflammatory signals to control how MSCs affect the immune system," said first author Josh Zimmerman, PhD, a former graduate student in the McDevitt lab. "Our research suggests bioengineering has real potential to improve the anti-inflammatory and therapeutic abilities of MSCs. The next step is to test this method in a mouse model of autoimmune disease."
By
Dr. G. Saravanan
Associate Professor & Head
Department of Biochemistry
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