July 3, 2019
Keio University School of Medicine
A research group from the Department of Internal Medicine (Gastroenterology) at the Keio University School of Medicine, led by Professor Takanori Kanai, Associate Professor Nobuhiro Nakamoto, and Collaborative Researcher Yuzo Koda, has discovered a significant decrease in plasmacytoid dendritic cells, a type of immune cell, in the livers and blood of patients with acute liver failure. Acute liver failure is a liver disease with a high mortality rate for which there are few effective treatments other than liver transplantation.
Furthermore, the group clarified that plasmacytoid dendritic cells have a protective function against acute hepatitis, as the condition worsened when acute hepatitis was induced in mice lacking these cells, and improved when they were transplanted into mice with acute hepatitis. They also revealed that plasmacytoid dendritic cells increase the immunosuppressive cytokine IL-35, which is produced by regulatory T cells, thereby suppressing TH1 cells and the hepatitis-exacerbating factor IFN-γ that they produce.
These findings demonstrate the potential of plasmacytoid dendritic cells to protect the liver from rapidly progressing hepatitis and detail their protective function mediated by regulatory T cells and IL-35. It is hoped that this will lead to the development of new therapies and diagnostic agents for acute hepatitis and acute liver failure that utilize plasmacytoid dendritic cells.
The results of this research were published in the online edition of the international academic journal "Journal of Clinical Investigation" on July 2, 2019 (U.S. Eastern Time).
For the full press release, please see below.