JEM: scientists have found time switches that control the start and stop of inflammation! Or will help a variety of inflammatory disease treatment!

February 9, 2018 / bioun / - a new study completed by scientists from the University of Queensland (UQ) may be the key to prevent the damage caused by common liver diseases, Alzheimer's disease and uncontrolled inflammation caused by gout Photo source: researchers at the University of Queensland have revealed how normal cells automatically stop the inflammatory process and are looking for ways to stop runaway inflammation Kate Schroder, an associate professor at the Institute of molecular biology (IMB), explains that this inflammatory process contributes to many diseases "Now that we understand how this process stops in healthy cells, we can explore why this inflammatory process goes out of control in a disease state, so this research is exciting." Dr Schroder said Her work at the IMB Center for inflammation and disease research focuses on inflammatory corpuscles, a machine-like protein complex that plays an important role in inflammation and disease "When the body is infected, damaged and detected by the immune system, these complexes form, which send signals to the immune cells to make them respond If this damage cannot be removed, such as amyloid plaques in Alzheimer's disease, these molecular machines continue to signal that persistent inflammation leads to neurodegenerative damage " Dr Schroder's team, led by Dave Boucher, found that normal inflammatory bodies have a time switch that ensures that they disappear at a specific time after stimulation "These inflammatory bodies cause inflammation by activating proteins that, like scissors, can cut themselves and other proteins." Dr Schroder said "We found that after a certain period of time the protein would cut itself again to terminate this signaling pathway, so if we could manipulate this system, we could turn off this pathway in the disease." Dr Schroder has begun to study the role of inflammatory bodies in fatty liver, which is a growing disease worldwide The rise in the incidence rate of obesity and diabetes worldwide has promoted the outbreak of fatty liver "In some patients with fatty liver, the liver accumulates fat and produces inflammation, which can lead to cirrhosis and even liver cancer." IMB researchers, including Dr Schroder, have developed drugs that inhibit inflammatory corpuscles and are currently being commercialized by infrazome Ltd The study was recently published in Journal of experimental medicine Reference: Kate Schroder et al Caspase-1 self cleanup is an intrinsic mechanism to terminate informsome activity The Journal of experimental medicine, 2018; jem.20172222 doi: 10.1084/jem.20172222