According to a story from rte.ie, a team of scientists from the Trinity College Dublin have managed to discover a new technique that allowed them to shut down inflammatory response in certain types of immune system cells. This could have implications for the treatment of a variety of inflammatory rare diseases.
In the study, the researchers were working with a type of white blood cell called a macrophage, which has been implicated as a source of inflammation in certain rare diseases. The breakthrough came when scientists introduced glucose into these cells. This caused a reaction that produced a molecule known as itaconate, which effectively shuts off the activity of macrophage an stops the inflammatory activity in its tracks. Luke O’Neill, a biochemistry professor at the college, says that very little research has been done on itaconate in the past, so its role in inflammation was previously unknown.
The new discovery implies a lot of possibilities, including the development of this molecule into a potential therapy for inflammatory diseases. However, more research will have to be done to understand how this will become possible. This discovery was the result of six years of research and has been the most significant finding from the project so far. A pharmaceutical company called Sitryx has been observing the progress of the research closely and hopes to be the first drug developer to utilize the new discovery to develop therapies.
Still, there is much more work to be done before any new drugs will come of this research. How a potential new drug would precisely work is still unclear; after all, the study was only conducted with isolated human cells and mice—a far cry from getting an idea of how it will work with rare disease patients.
