Blocking key protein could halt age-related decline in immune system, study finds
By BY Bruce Goldman | 03 Oct 2012
The older we get, the weaker our immune systems tend to become, leaving us vulnerable to infectious diseases and cancer and eroding our ability to benefit from vaccination. Now Stanford University School of Medicine scientists have found that blocking the action of a single protein whose levels in our immune cells creep steadily upward with age can restore those cells' response to a vaccine.
This discovery holds important long-term therapeutic ramifications, said Jorg Goronzy, MD, PhD, professor of rheumatology and immunology and the senior author of a study published online on 30 September in Nature Medicine. It might someday be possible, he said, to pharmacologically counter aging's effects on our immune systems.
In the study, the Stanford team fingered a protein called DUSP6 that interferes with the capacity of an important class of immune cells to respond to the presence of a foreign substance, such as those appearing on the surface of an invading pathogen or in a vaccine designed to stifle that invasion.
The researchers also identified a potential lead compound that, by inhibiting DUSP6's action, restores those cells' responsiveness to a more youthful state.
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A person's immune response declines slowly but surely starting at around age 40, said Goronzy. ''While 90 per cent of young adults respond to most vaccines, after age 60 that response rate is down to around 40-45 per cent. With some vaccines, it's as low as 20 per cent.'' Vaccine failure among seniors poses a serious health problem: Some 90 per cent of influenza deaths are among people over age 65.
A vaccine is, in essence, a ''mug shot'' of one or more of a pathogen's most prominent features, akin to a photo of a giant wart on a suspect's nose. This chemical snapshot - or antigen, in scientific parlance - is nailed into customised ''frames'' and displayed on the surface of ''desk cop'' cells specialising in signalling T cells, the ''beat cops'' of the immune system.
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