Advanced Science recently published a paper entitled Melittin-Carrying Nanoparticle Suppress T Cell-Driven Immunity in a Murine Allergic Dermatitis Model. The paper comes from Professor Zhihong Zhang’s group at Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics (WNLO), Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
Figure 1 Scheme of α-Melittin-NP’s immune regulation mechanism in ACD
Allergic contact dermatitis (ACD) and atopic dermatitis (AD) are recurrent skin disorders that are hard to cure. Although corticosteroids have been widely used to treat ACD and AD, the side effects of corticosteroids are non-negligible. Bee venom is a traditional medicine that has been used to treat allergic diseases, yet the cytotoxicity and uncertainty of the mechanism hindered its’ clinical application which encourage researchers to explore new immune-regulatory treatments.
Figure 2 α-Melittin-NP’s curative and protective effect in ACD.
The research team develops a Melittin-Carrying Nanoparticle(α-Melittin-NP) which efficiently cure ACD and AD in a murine model and alleviate the toxicity of melittin on local skin area at the same time. They find low-dose α-Melittin-NPs prevented the skin damage caused by melittin administration alone and efficiently targeted lymph nodes (Fig 2,3). α-Melittin-NPs restrain RelB activity in dendritic cells (DCs) and further suppress dendritic cell activation and maturation in lymph nodes. Additionally,α-melittin-NPs led to the relief of antigen recognition-induced effector T cell arrest and inhibit allergen-specific T cell proliferation and activation (Fig 1). Significantly, this approach successfully controls Th1-type cytokine release in the ACD model and restricts Th2-type cytokine and IgE release in the AD-like model (Fig 2,3).
Figure 3 α-Melittin-NP’s curative and protective effect in AD.
This article elucidates the curative effect and mechanism of α-Melittin-NP which efficiently elicits immunosuppression against DCandT cell-mediated immune reactions, providing a promising therapeutic strategy for treating skin disorders.
Dr. Zheng Liu and Dr. Zhan Fan are the co-first authors of this paper, and Professor Zhihong Zhang is the last corresponding author. This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 81625012 and 81901691), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2019kfyXMBZ022), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2019M662637), the Hainan University Scientific Research Foundation (No. KYQD(ZR)20078), the Innovation Fund of WNLO.
Title: Melittin-Carrying Nanoparticle Suppress T Cell-Driven Immunity in a Murine Allergic Dermatitis Model, Advanced Science.
DOI:10.1002/advs.202204184
Fulltextlinks: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.202204184
