Overturning Traditional Beliefs – Cambridge Scientists Have Discovered “New Rules of the

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered that regulatory T cells form a single, mobile population that patrols the entire body to repair tissue damage. This new understanding could revolutionize the treatment of various diseases by enabling targeted immune suppression and tissue regeneration in specific organs, potentially improving the effectiveness and speed of treatments. The team is now working towards clinical trials to further explore these findings.

Cambridge researchers have discovered that regulatory T cells traverse the body to repair tissue, opening avenues for targeted treatments in various diseases.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have found that regulatory T cells, a kind of white blood cell, form a single, large group that continuously circulates throughout the body to seek out and repair damaged tissues.

This overturns the traditional thinking that regulatory T cells exist as multiple specialist populations that are restricted to specific parts of the body. The finding has implications for the treatment of many different diseases – because almost all diseases and injuries trigger the body’s immune system.

Current anti-inflammatory drugs treat the whole body, rather than just the part needing treatment. The researchers say their findings mean it could be possible to shut down the body’s immune response and repair damage in any specific part of the body, without affecting the rest of it. This means that higher, more targeted doses of drugs could be used to treat disease – potentially with rapid results.

Prof Adrian Liston and Dr James Dooley, senior authors on the study, use microscopy to track the anti-inflammatory regulatory T cells as they traffic through the tissue. Credit: Louisa Wood/Babraham Institute

Unified Healing Force

“We’ve uncovered new rules of the immune system. This ‘unified healer army’ can do everything – repair injured muscle, make your fat cells respond better to
Regulatory T cells can migrate from tissue to tissue via the blood. The cells take merely minutes to travel around the body, and then slow down to a crawl once they enter a tissue, spending on average three weeks inside the tissue before leaving. Credit: Equinox Graphics

“It’s difficult to think of a disease, injury, or infection that doesn’t involve some kind of immune response, and our finding really changes the way we could control this response,” said Liston.

He added: “Now that we know these regulatory T cells are present everywhere in the body, in principle we can start to make immune suppression and tissue regeneration treatments that are targeted against a single organ – a vast improvement on current treatments that are like hitting the body with a sledgehammer.”

Drug Development and Clinical Applications

Using a drug they have already designed, the researchers have shown – in mice – that it’s possible to attract regulatory T cells to a specific part of the body, increase their number, and activate them to turn off the immune response and promote healing in just one organ or tissue.

“By boosting the number of regulatory T cells in targeted areas of the body, we can help the body do a better job of repairing itself, or managing immune responses,” said Liston.

Dr. Oliver Burton, lead author on the study, uses spectral cytometry to analyze anti-inflammatory regulatory T cells from different tissues. Credit: Louisa Wood, Babraham Institute

He added: “There are so many different diseases where we’d like to shut down an immune response and start a repair response, for example, autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, and even many infectious diseases.”

Most symptoms of infections such as COVID are not from the DOI: 10.1016/j.immuni.2024.05.023

The study was funded by the European Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.