Diabetes hits a checkpoint
Cranking up PD-L1 on HSPCs for autoimmune disease
A Science Translational Medicine study suggests increasing PD-L1 levels in hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) could help treat Type I diabetes. Additionally, the authors think transplants of HSPCs modified with PD-L1-boosting gene therapies or compounds could be deployed to treat a wide range of autoimmune diseases, and the biology controlling PD-L1 expression in HSPCs could be exploited to treat cancer.
Author Paolo Fiorina told BioCentury that HSPCs were known to tamp down inflammation in graft-versus-host disease (GvHD), and that his group had previously shown HSPC-mediated immune suppression required PD-L1 expression by the cells. Fiorina is an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a research associate at Boston Children’s Hospital. ...