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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Xiao WangORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).
© The Author(s) 2024.Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are crucial immune cells for tissue repair and regeneration. However, their potential as a cell-based regenerative therapy is not yet fully understood. Here, we show that local delivery of exogenous Tregs into injured mouse bone, muscle, and skin greatly enhances tissue healing. Mechanistically, exogenous Tregs rapidly adopt an injury-specific phenotype in response to the damaged tissue microenvironment, upregulating genes involved in immunomodulation and tissue healing. We demonstrate that exogenous Tregs exert their regenerative effect by directly and indirectly modulating monocytes/macrophages (Mo/MΦ) in injured tissues, promoting their switch to an anti-inflammatory and pro-healing state via factors such as interleukin (IL)-10. Validating the key role of IL-10 in exogenous Treg-mediated repair and regeneration, the pro-healing capacity of these cells is lost when Il10 is knocked out. Additionally, exogenous Tregs reduce neutrophil and cytotoxic T cell accumulation and IFN-γ production in damaged tissues, further dampening the pro-inflammatory Mo/MΦ phenotype. Highlighting the potential of this approach, we demonstrate that allogeneic and human Tregs also promote tissue healing. Together, this study establishes exogenous Tregs as a possible universal cell-based therapy for regenerative medicine and provides key mechanistic insights that could be harnessed to develop immune cell-based therapies to enhance tissue healing.
Author(s): Nayer B, Tan JL, Alshoubaki YK, Lu Y-Z, Legrand JMD, Lau S, Hu N, Park AJ, Wang X-N, Amann-Zalcenstein D, Hickey PF, Wilson T, Kuhn GA, Muller R, Vasanthakumar A, Akira S, Martino MM
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Nature Communications
Year: 2024
Volume: 15
Issue: 1
Online publication date: 09/09/2024
Acceptance date: 05/08/2024
Date deposited: 16/09/2024
ISSN (electronic): 2041-1723
Publisher: Nature Research
URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51353-2
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-51353-2
Data Access Statement: All data associated with this study are present in the main text or the Supplementary Materials. RNA sequencing data generated for this study have been deposited in NCBI’s Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database under accession code GSE228871 for bulk RNA-seq of endogenous Tregs, GSE230173 for mini-bulk RNA-seq of monocytes/macrophages from Treg-treated mice, GSE230177 for mini-bulk RNA-seq of recovered exogenous Tregs and GSE268828 for bulk RNA-seq of macrophages from Treg-depleted mice. Source data are provided with this paper
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