“What our work suggests is that you can drive programmed cell death even in microbes,” said senior study investigator Judy Lieberman, MD, PhD. “I think it's probably a really ancient pathway." The study was published recently in the journal Nature Medicine.
The researchers used both human and specially engineered mouse cells to visualize microptosis after infected the cells with three intracellular parasites:
- Trypanosoma cruzi
- Toxoplasma gondii
- Leishmania major
"While the parasitic enzymes that microptosis acts on are similar to mammalian enzymes," Leiberman said, "they are different enough that it should be relatively easy to develop drugs that target them and leave a patient's cells alone."
Indeed, when the body’s killer immune cells are overwhelmed with a particularly immense infection of parasites, boosting the microptotic action of the team of proteins with drug injections could prevent dangerous spread of parasitic infections.
Source: Boston Children's Hospital