What is it about?
Tiny particles (exosomes) from inflamed neutrophils (PMNs) express a damaging enzyme (NE) on their surface. This enzyme is immune to a protective inhibitory factor in the lung, leading to 10,000X more destruction than the enzyme when it is not on an exosome. These exosomes are in the lung fluids of people with COPD and are capable of transferring a COPD-like disease from people to mice, almost like a microbe. These PMN-derived exosomes thus appear to be important contributors to the lung destruction seen in COPD.
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Why is it important?
This is one of the first non-infectious subcellular entities known to transfer disease from one species to another. This advances our understanding of how tissue destruction occurs in COPD and other inflammatory diseases. Therapies aimed at blocking these damaging exosomes could be a breakthrough in preventing tissue damage.
Perspectives
We believe this study of PMN-derived exosomes in COPD is a major breakthrough in how tissue damage occurs in inflammatory disease. We are hopeful that this could lead to much more effective treatments for such diseases and perhaps similar breakthroughs in other diseases that share this pathway in common with COPD.
Derek Russell
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Activated PMN Exosomes: Pathogenic Entities Causing Matrix Destruction and Disease in the Lung, Cell, January 2019, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.12.002.
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