Yvonne Bordon

2 weeks ago | nature.com | Yvonne Bordon

Neutrophils are classically thought of as early immune responders that fight infections through phagocytosis and by producing toxic factors. Now, Vicanolo et al. show that neutrophils can produce extracellular matrix and fortify skin barrier functions, both in the steady state and in response to skin damage. When neutrophils were extracted from tissues and stained for protein expression of the type III collagen α1 chain (COL3A1), COL3A1+ cells were found to be more abundant in barrier tissues.

1 month ago | nature.com | Yvonne Bordon

A study in Nature has identified a pathway through which cyclooxygenase 1 (COX1) inhibitors, such as aspirin, can prevent cancer metastasis. Yang et al. show that COX1 inhibition limits platelet production of thromboxane A2 (TXA2), a blood clotting factor that suppresses T cell effector functions. Drugs like aspirin can block this platelet-mediated pathway of suppression, enhancing the anti-metastatic activity of T cells.

2 months ago | nature.com | Yvonne Bordon

Genome-wide association studies have identified HDAC9, which encodes histone deacetylase 9, as a major risk locus for cardiovascular disease. Asare et al. now report that the targeted deletion of a conserved cis-regulatory element (CRE) in mouse Hdac9 leads to increased Hdac9 expression, which in turn increases NLRP3 inflammasome activation.

Dec 19, 2024 | nature.com | Yvonne Bordon

Transposable elements (TEs; also known as transposons) are DNA ‘parasites’ that constitute more than 50% of the human genome. Many intronic TEs have splicing signal sequences that enable their incorporation into cellular transcripts (referred to as TE exonization) but most exonized TEs were thought to be untranslated and non-functional. Pasquesi et al. now report that TE exonization can generate functional variants of many proteins involved in immune regulation.

Dec 3, 2024 | nature.com | Yvonne Bordon

Reporting in Nature, Kipnis and colleagues show that endogenous self-peptides derived from central nervous system (CNS) antigens are presented on MHC class II (MHCII) molecules at the borders of the CNS and can act as ‘guardians’ of immune privilege by expanding suppressive populations of CD4+ T cells. To explore how immune tolerance is maintained to CNS antigens, the authors characterized the MHCII peptidome in the mouse CNS and its associated borders.