The STE20 kinase TAOK3 controls the development of house dust mite-induced asthma in mice.

Background: The most common endotype of asthma is type 2-high asthma, which is sometimes driven by adaptive allergen-specific T2 lymphocytes that react to allergens presented by dendritic cells (DCs), or sometimes by an innate immune response dominated by type 2 innate lymphocytes (ILC2s). Understanding the underlying pathophysiology of asthma is essential to improve patient-tailored therapy. The STE20 kinase thousand-and-one kinase 3 (TAOK3) controls key features in the biology of DCs and lymphocytes, but to our knowledge, its potential usefulness as a target for asthma therapy has not yet been addressed.

Objective: We examined if and how loss of Taok3 affects the development of house dust mite (HDM)-driven allergic asthma in an in vivo mouse model.

Methods: Wild-type Taok3 and gene-deficient Taok3 mice were sensitized and challenged with HDM, and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid composition, mediastinal lymph node cytokine production, lung histology, and bronchial hyperreactivity measured. Conditional Taok3 mice were crossed to tissue- and cell-specific specific deletor Cre mice to understand how Taok3 acted on asthma susceptibility. Kinase-dead (KD) Taok3 mice were generated to probe for the druggability of this pathway. Activation of HDM-specific T cells was measured in adoptively transferred HDM-specific T-cell receptor-transgenic CD4 T cells. ILC2 biology was assessed by in vivo and in vitro IL-33 stimulation assays in Taok3 and Taok3, Taok3, and Red5-Cre Taok3 mice.

Results: Taok3 mice failed to mount salient features of asthma, including airway eosinophilia, T2 cytokine production, IgE secretion, airway goblet cell metaplasia, and bronchial hyperreactivity compared to controls. This was due to intrinsic loss of Taok3 in hematopoietic and not epithelial cells. Loss of Taok3 resulted in hampered HDM-induced lung DC migration to the draining lymph nodes and defective priming of HDM-specific T2 cells. Strikingly, HDM and IL-33-induced ILC2 proliferation and function were also severely affected in Taok3-deficient and Taok3 mice.

Conclusions: Absence of Taok3 or loss of its kinase activity protects from HDM-driven allergic asthma as a result of defects in both adaptive DC-mediated T2 activation and innate ILC2 function. This identifies Taok3 as an interesting drug target, justifying further testing as a new treatment for type 2-high asthma.