When liver immune cells turn bad
Using cells from mice and human livers, Toronto General Hospital Research Institute researchers demonstrated for the first time how under specific conditions, such as obesity, liver CD8+ T cells, white blood cells which play an important role in the control of viral infections, become highly activated and inflammatory, reprogramming themselves into disease-driving cells. Scientists have been trying for many years to discover why the liver continues to pump out too much glucose in people with diabetes. This paper sheds light on the markers of activation and inflammation in CD8+ T cells and the Interferon-1 pathway which helps stimulate their function. The research is entitled, "Type 1 Interferon Responses Drive Intrahepatic T cells to Promote Metabolic Syndrome," by first authors Magar Ghazarian, a former graduate student, Dr. Xavier Revelo, a post-doctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Daniel Winer, and senior authors Dr. Shawn Winer, Laboratory Medicine, St. Michael's ...