Nature Biomedical Engineering最新文献

Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease associated with the accumulation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) in arterial walls. Higher levels of the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10 in serum are correlated with reduced plaque burden. However, cytokine therapies have not translated well to the clinic, partially due to their rapid clearance and pleiotropic nature. Here we engineer IL-10 to overcome these challenges by hitchhiking on LDL to atherosclerotic plaques. Specifically, we construct Fab-IL-10 by fusing IL-10 to the antibody fragment (Fab) of four different oxidized LDL-binding antibodies. We show that systemically administered Fab-IL-10 constructs bind circulating LDL and traffic to atherosclerotic plaques in atherosclerosis mouse models. Among them, 2D03-IL-10 significantly reduces aortic immune cell infiltration to levels comparable to healthy mice, whereas non-targeted IL-10 has no therapeutic effect. Mechanistically, we demonstrate that 2D03-IL-10 preferentially associates with foamy macrophages and reduces pro-inflammatory activation markers. This modular technology may be applied to a variety of protein therapeutics and shows promise as a potential targeted anti-inflammatory therapy in atherosclerosis.

Adoptive T cell therapy using T cells engineered with novel T cell receptors (TCRs) targeting tumour-specific peptides is a promising immunotherapy. However, these TCR-T cells can cross-react with off-target peptides, leading to severe autoimmune toxicities. Current efforts focus on identifying TCRs with reduced cross-reactivity. Here we show that T cell cross-reactivity can be controlled by the co-signalling molecules CD5, CD8 and CD4, without modifying the TCR. We find the largest reduction in cytotoxic T cell cross-reactivity by knocking out CD8 and expressing CD4. Cytotoxic T cells engineered with a CD8→CD4 co-receptor switch show reduced cross-reactivity to random and positional scanning peptide libraries, as well as to self-peptides, while maintaining their on-target potency. Therefore, co-receptor switching generates super selective T cells that reduce the risk of lethal off-target cross-reactivity and offers a universal method to enhance the safety of T cell immunotherapies for potentially any TCR.

Identifying novel gene fusions is critical for cancer diagnosis and drug development. While a few advanced methods have shown the capability to detect gene fusions involving unknown partners, comprehensive detection of gene fusions, especially of those with low copy numbers, remains a challenge. Indeed, most current panel-based sequencing methods fall short in reliability and cost efficiency. Here we present a method for detecting potentially novel gene fusions using anchored random reverse primers (ARRP) during PCR-based library construction, allowing the simultaneous capture of mutations and RNA splicing variants. Furthermore, the combination with blocker displacement amplification technology enables a median of 22-fold allele enrichment for gene fusions, achieving a limit of detection ~10-fold lower than that of current technologies and resulting in an 8-fold cost reduction. Using ARRP-seq, we identify numerous novel fusions in 98 clinical tissue samples, showcasing its diagnostic potential in prostate cancer and capacity for personalized diagnostics in cervical cancer.