Skin inflammation is potentiated by coordinated epithelial and immune cell metabolism. In this issue of Immunity, Subudhi and Konieczny et al. delineate how HIF1α regulates epithelial cell glycolysis during psoriasis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObesity is associated with comorbidities including type 2 diabetes, chronic nonhealing wounds and psoriasis. Normally skin homeostasis and repair is regulated through the production of cytokines and growth factors derived from skin-resident cells including epidermal γδ T cells. However epidermal γδ T cells exhibit reduced proliferation and defective growth factor and cytokine production during obesity and type 2 diabetes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWound healing has been extensively studied through the lens of inflammatory disorders and cancer, but limited attention has been given to hematophagy and arthropod-borne diseases. Hematophagous ectoparasites, including ticks, subvert the wound healing response to maintain prolonged attachment and facilitate blood-feeding. Here, we unveil a strategy by which extracellular vesicles (EVs) ensure blood-feeding and arthropod survival in three medically relevant tick species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChronic, nonhealing wounds remain a clinical challenge and a significant burden for the healthcare system. Skin-resident and infiltrating T cells that recognize pathogens, microbiota, or self-antigens participate in wound healing. A precise balance between proinflammatory T cells and regulatory T cells is required for the stages of wound repair to proceed efficiently.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF. We aim to develop a machine learning algorithm to quantify adipose tissue deposition at surgical sites as a function of biomaterial implantation. .
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBioengineering (Basel)
October 2021
Given the incidence of corneal dysfunctions and diseases worldwide and the limited availability of healthy, human donors, investigators are working to generate engineered cellular and acellular therapeutic approaches as alternatives to corneal transplants from human cadavers. These engineered strategies aim to address existing complications with human corneal transplants, including graft rejection, infection, and complications resulting from surgical methodologies. The main goals of these research endeavors are to (1) determine ideal mechanical properties, (2) devise methodologies to improve the efficacy of engineered corneal grafts and cell-based therapies, and (3) optimize transplantation of engineered tissue structures in the eye.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIdentifying the "essential" components of an undergraduate immunology lecture course can be daunting because of the varying postgraduate pathways students take. The American Association of Immunologists Education Committee commissioned an Ad Hoc Committee, representing undergraduate, graduate, and medical institutions as well as the biotechnology community, to develop core curricular recommendations for teaching immunology to undergraduates. In a reiterative process involving the American Association of Immunologists teaching community, 14 key topics were identified and expanded to include foundational concepts, subtopics and examples, and advanced subtopics, providing a flexible list for curriculum development and avenues for higher-level learning.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSponge-like biomaterials formed from silk fibroin are promising as degradable materials in clinical applications due to their controllable breakdown into simple amino acids or small peptides . Silk fibroin, isolated from silkworm cocoons, can be used to form sponge-like materials with a variety of tunable parameters including the elastic modulus, porosity and pore size, and level of nanocrystalline domains. These parameters can be independently tuned during formulation resulting in a wide parameter space and set of final materials.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe skin is a critical barrier that protects against damage and infection. Within the epidermis and dermis reside γδ T cells that play a variety of key roles in wound healing and tissue homeostasis. Skin-resident γδ T cells require T cell receptor (TCR) ligation, costimulation, and cytokine reception to mediate keratinocyte activity and inflammatory responses at the wound site for proper wound repair.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSkin-resident and infiltrating γδ T lymphocytes are components of the cutaneous immune system that provide the first line of defense against pathogens and the environment. Research that employs the isolation and culture of T cells from murine and human skin can help delineate the molecular and cellular mechanisms utilized by T lymphocytes in skin-specific immunity. However, obtaining high numbers of T cells from epithelial tissue without resorting to long-term culture or transformation can be difficult.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFγδ T lymphocytes maintain skin homeostasis by balancing keratinocyte differentiation and proliferation with the destruction of infected or malignant cells. An imbalance in skin-resident T cell function can aggravate skin-related autoimmune diseases, impede tumor eradication, or disrupt proper wound healing. Much of the published work on human skin T cells attributes T cell function in the skin to αβ T cells, while γδ T cells are an often overlooked participant.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors are approved to prevent allograft rejection and control malignancy. Unfortunately, they are associated with adverse effects, such as wound healing complications that detract from more extensive use. There is a lack of prospective wound healing studies to monitor patients treated with mTOR inhibitors, such as everolimus or sirolimus, especially in nondiabetics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe epithelial tissues of the skin, lungs, reproductive tract, and intestines are the largest physical barriers the body has to protect against infection. Epithelial tissues are woven with a matrix of immune cells programed to mobilize the host innate and adaptive immune responses. Included among these immune cells are gamma delta T lymphocytes (γδ T cells) that are unique in their T cell receptor usage, location, and functions in the body.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe development of intestinal permeability and the penetration of microbial products are key factors associated with the onset of metabolic disease. However, the mechanisms underlying this remain unclear. Here we show that, unlike liver or adipose tissue, high fat diet (HFD)/obesity in mice does not cause monocyte/macrophage infiltration into the intestine or pro-inflammatory changes in gene expression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObese patients are susceptible to increased morbidity and mortality associated with infectious diseases such as influenza A virus. γδ T cells and memory αβ T cells play key roles in reducing viral load by rapidly producing IFN-γ and lysing infected cells. In this article we analyze the impact of obesity on T lymphocyte antiviral immunity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe international γδ T cell conference takes place every 2 years. After being held in Denver (USA) in 2004, La Jolla (USA) in 2006, Marseille (France) in 2008, Kiel (Germany) in 2010 and Freiburg (Germany) in 2012, the γδ T cell community gathered this time in Chicago (USA). This conference was organized by Zheng Chen from 16 to 18 May 2014 at his home institution, the University of Illinois College of Medicine, and boasted 180 attendants from all over the world and almost 100 submitted abstracts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe world population is rapidly growing and ageing at a pace that is projected to continue for at least three decades. This shift towards an older populace has invariably increased the number of individuals with diseases related to ageing, such as chronic kidney disease. The increase in chronic kidney disease is associated with a growing number of elderly patients receiving kidney transplants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTCR-specific activation is pivotal to dendritic epidermal T cell (DETC) function during cutaneous wound repair. However, DETC TCR ligands are uncharacterized, and little is known about their expression patterns and kinetics. Using soluble DETC TCR tetramers, we demonstrate that DETC TCR ligands are not constitutively expressed in healthy tissue but are rapidly upregulated following wounding on keratinocytes bordering wound edges.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObesity and related type 2 diabetes are increasing at epidemic proportions globally. It is now recognized that inflammatory responses mediated within the adipose tissue in obesity are central to the development of disease. Once initiated, chronic inflammation associated with obesity leads to the modulation of immune cell function.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSkin complications and chronic non-healing wounds are common in obesity, metabolic disease, and type 2 diabetes. Epidermal γδ T cells normally produce keratinocyte growth factors, participate in wound repair, and are necessary for keratinocyte homeostasis. We have determined that in γδ T cell-deficient mice, there are reduced numbers of keratinocytes and the epidermis exhibits a flattened, thinner structure with fewer basal keratinocytes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEpithelial cells provide an initial line of defense against damage and pathogens in barrier tissues such as the skin; however this balance is disrupted in obesity and metabolic disease. Skin gammadelta T cells recognize epithelial damage, and release cytokines and growth factors that facilitate wound repair. We report here that hyperglycemia results in impaired skin gammadelta T cell proliferation due to altered STAT5 signaling, ultimately resulting in half the number of gammadelta T cells populating the epidermis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe murine epidermis contains resident T cells that express a canonical gammadelta TCR. These cells arise from fetal thymic precursors and use a TCR that is restricted to the skin in adult animals. These cells assume a dendritic morphology in normal skin and constitutively produce low levels of cytokines that contribute to epidermal homeostasis.
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