Università della Svizzera italiana

Neutralization and clearance of GM-CSF by autoantibodies in pulmonary alveolar proteinosis

Piccoli, Luca ; Campo, Ilaria ; Fregni, Chiara Silacci ; Fernandez Rodriguez, Blanca Maria ; Minola, Andrea ; Sallusto, Federica ; Luisetti, Maurizio ; Corti, Davide ; Lanzavecchia, Antonio

In: Nature communications, 2015, vol. 6, p. 7375

Pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (PAP) is a severe autoimmune disease caused by autoantibodies that neutralize GM-CSF resulting in impaired function of alveolar macrophages. In this study, we characterize 21 GM-CSF autoantibodies from PAP patients and find that somatic mutations critically determine their specificity for the self-antigen. Individual antibodies only partially neutralize GM-CSF...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Activin-A co-opts IRF4 and AhR signaling to induce human regulatory T cells that restrain asthmatic responses

Tousa, Sofia ; Semitekolou, Maria ; Morianos, Ioannis ; Banos, Aggelos ; Trochoutsou, Aikaterini I. ; Brodie, Tess M. ; Poulos, Nikolaos ; Samitas, Konstantinos ; Kapasa, Maria ; Konstantopoulos, Dimitris ; Paraskevopoulos, Giannis ; Gaga, Mina ; Hawrylowicz, Catherine M. ; Sallusto, Federica ; Xanthou, Georgina

In: Proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the United States of America, 2017, vol. 114, no. 14, p. E2891-E2900

Type 1 regulatory T (Tr1) cells play a pivotal role in restraining human T-cell responses toward environmental allergens and protecting against allergic diseases. Still, the precise molecular cues that underlie their transcriptional and functional specification remain elusive. Here, we show that the cytokine activin-A instructs the generation of CD4+ T cells that express the...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Chemokines : chemistry, biochemistry and biological function

Legler, Daniel F. ; Thelen, Marcus

In: Chimia : International journal for chemistry, 2016, vol. 70, no. 12, p. 856-859

The in vitro synthesis of correctly folded functional proteins remains challenging. Chemokines, which consist of only 70–100 amino acids, are accessible through solid- phase synthesis and easily fold into a thermally stable tertiary structure. From the time of their discovery in the late 1980s chemokines could therefore be synthesized using biochemical and chemical protocols for...