Skewed polyamine metabolism leads to functional defects in regulatory T cells during chronic inflammation

Abstract

Regulatory T cells (Treg) are a critical immune component guarding against excessive inflammatory responses, but current understanding of Treg heterogeneity and function in non-lymphoid tissue in humans is limited. In this project we are characterising unique types of Treg signatures in the context of tissue-confined inflammatory responses in human skin and gut. We hypothesize that impairment in tissue-specific immune regulation leads to exacerbated T cell responses and chronic inflammation in these diseases. To investigate this, we are utilizing transcriptomic, phenotypic and metabolomic methods, using an integrative bioinformatical approach of single-cell (sc) sequencing data and metabolomic screens of Tregs from blood and tissue of patients with chronic inflammatory diseases. ScRNA-sequencing data from patients diagnosed with psoriasis, chronic cutaneous sarcoidosis, and ulcerative colitis have shown that diseased tissue-Tregs have a strong, specific, tissue-resident signature. We identified a skewed expression of polyamine catabolic genes linked to a more activated, Th17-like Treg phenotype in inflamed tissue. We confirmed these findings on metabolite and protein level, using skin-derived Tregs to describe a functional defect linked to polyamine metabolism in chronically inflamed skin. Together, our results indicate a novel interface of polyamine catabolism and Treg function in non-lymphoid tissues which leads to impaired control of effector T cell responses. Ultimately, our findings significantly contribute to basic understanding of Treg function and shed light on immune regulation during chronic inflammation in human tissue.

Date
Location
51 Annual Meeting of the European Society for Dermatological Research, Amsterdam, Nederlands
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