Periodic Reporting for period 1 - COR1-TCELL (Analysis of the role for coronin 1-dependent cell density signalling in T-cell homeostasis)
Reporting period: 2019-01-01 to 2020-12-31
Regulation of immune cells is a fundamental problem not only in infectious diseases or autoimmune diseases but also in cancer immunotherapy, for which European countries have invested and developed as one leading edge of the world. Therefore, gaining new knowledge on how to control the cell death and cell survival of immune cells, particularly T cells as a central control of the immune system in our bodies, will support further development of safe and efficient immune therapies. The main goal of the project was “to identify a molecular pathway mediated by coronin 1 that regulates peripheral T-cell homeostasis,” conducted by the researcher in the field of immunobiology, utilising a mouse model which shows unwanted T cell death by a lack of coronin 1 gene.
As a major result of the project, combining the in vitro T cell culture experiment originally established by the fellow researcher as well as in vivo T cell transfer experiment in T cell-deficient mice, together with the state-of-the-art RNA sequencing analysis, a specific molecular pathway which regulates T cell survival in a coronin 1-dependent manner has been identified. This result will be submitted to a high-impact journal and exploited by other researchers and clinicians in the field of T cell immunology or immunotherapy upon publication.
Elucidating the roles for coronin 1 in T-cell homeostasis will benefit understanding the regulation of T-cell death and survival during immunotherapies such as the recent chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. Exploitation of the result from this project upon publication will provide important knowledge on T-cell control for clinicians, basic scientists, as well as developers from industries. European countries are regarded as a central market of this CAR T-cell therapy.