Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

The ANKRD55 locus has been associated with multiple autoimmune diseases. Using murine models of inflammation, Xu et al. demonstrate an important role of th

Findings, based on mouse studies, could pave the way for more effective cancer treatments

Nature Immunology - LaFleur, Milling et al. perform an in vivo CRISPR screen of CD8+ T cells responding to tumors. They identify the E3 ubiquitin ligase STUB1 as a potent negative regulator of CD8+...

Spatial mapping reveals genes contributing to fibrosis, or scarring, in the gut, laying the foundation for better treatments.

Pauken and Markson et al. show that when PD-1–expressing and PD-1 knockout CD8+ T cells are within the same tumor microenvironment, both cell types exhibit

Eggerthella lenta is both one of the most studied and least understood members of the human gut microbiome. Most of the interest in this Gram-positive anaerobe originates from multiple robust associations of its population with a variety of autoimmune diseases, perhaps most notably inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The links between bacteria and inflammation are only partially known. Inflammation is driven by Th17 cells and their inflammatory cytokine IL-17, and the population of these cells is promoted by a transcription factor, RORγt. Bacterial metabolites appear to activate RORγt in a cell- and antigen-independent fashion, but the metabolites and their activating mechanism are unknown. This report describes an assay-driven search for pro-inflammatory metabolites from E. lenta that revealed a plasmalogen-triggered plasmalogen pair that forms a single molecule signal transduction device. Small electrophiles characteristic of inflammatory environments react with the plasmalogen’s sensitive vinyl ether moiety to create a lipid signal, a lysoglycoglycerolipid that upregulates the inflammatory cytokines TNF-α and IL-6 through a TLR receptor. This provides a molecular mechanism that allows E. lenta to upregulate inflammatory responses in a cell- and antigen-independent fashion. This molecular mechanism is similar to an endogenous signaling system that upregulates RORγt through a triggered mammalian plasmalogen signal, 1–18:0-lysophosphatidylethanolamine.

In this article, we have analyzed the serum proteome and metabolome in inflammatory bowel disease patients being treated with the anti-α4β7 integrin therapeutic agent vedolizumab. The pretreatment bi...

Using viral barcode tracing to detect interactions between glioblastoma cells and non-malignant astrocytes in patient samples, investigators discovered a pathway that reduces tumour-specific immunity ...

Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics analysis of stricturing Crohn’s disease highlights cellular heterogeneity in fibrotic tissue and identifies neighborhoods of fibroblasts and immune cells contri...

We recently described astrocyte pro-inflammatory epigenetic memory based on multiple complementary in vivo and in vitro studies, and the analysis of multiple sclerosis samples. Based on bioinformatic ...