New Study Shows How T-Cells affect Ageing

Rebecca Lewis June 06, 2016

Scientists from Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas have identified a link between ageing and T-cells - a type of immune cell that plays a significant role in fighting threats within the body that could lead to various illnesses.

They also found that older people have T-cells that are less effective particularly in fighting off hepatitis C virus. The study utilised a novel technique called iTAST which is able to measure how well T-cell receptors recognize and bind to their antigens like bacteria, cancer cells and viruses. Their findings suggest that if a person has low-affinity T-cells for a specific virus, the body would develop less effectiveness to fight the virus. On the other hand, high-affinity T-cells are able to effectively fight diseases caused by antigens, including diabetes and cancer.

The findings could benefit immunotherapy and vaccine development, resulting in improved personalized medicine and therapies.

"T-cell affinity is a parameter that can gauge how healthy your immune system is toward a specific antigen," said biomedical engineering Assistant Professor Jenny Jiang, one of the investigators. "We found that as you grow older, your T-cells capable of recognizing some of the viruses that you haven’t encountered before become progressively lower in affinity."

The researchers said the technique could be useful in evaluating the health status of an individual or in adoptive immunotherapy—a nascent field of medicine in which physicians tailor therapies and dosages for individual patients to rev up the body’s defences. In some immunotherapy methods, synthetic T-cell receptor genes that can recognize cancer cells are added to T-cells and then transferred back into the body. Although immunotherapy is a promising field, there have been examples where these genetically engineered T-cells cause dangerous unintended reactions in the body and even deaths.

Currently, they are working on further understanding T-cell affinity and the role it plays in aging and cancer, and in infections and autoimmune disease.

The study was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Source of this article:

Direct measurement of T cell receptor affinity and sequence from naïve antiviral T cells