Project description:The detailed mechanisms underlying regulatory significance of dietary components in modulating anti-tumor immunity remain largely unknown. Here, we applied a co-culture screen approach using a blood nutrient compound library to identify zeaxanthin, a dietary carotenoid pigment found in many fruits and vegetables that is important for eye health, as an immunomodulator that enhances cytotoxicity of CD8+ T cells towards tumor cells. Oral zeaxanthin, but not lutein, a carotenoid with similar structure, enhances anti-tumor immunity in vivo. Integrated multi-omics mechanistic studies reveal that zeaxanthin directly promotes T-cell receptor (TCR) stimulation on CD8+ T cell surface, leading to improved intracellular TCR signaling for effector T cell function. Hence, zeaxanthin treatment augments effectiveness of immune checkpoint inhibitor in vivo and human TCR-engineered CD8+ T cells to induce cell death in co-cultured tumor cells. Our findings uncover a previously unknown immunoregulatory function of zeaxanthin, which has translational potential as a dietary element in immunotherapy.
Project description:The detailed mechanisms underlying regulatory significance of dietary components in modulating anti-tumor immunity remain largely unknown. Here, we applied a co-culture screen approach using a blood nutrient compound library to identify zeaxanthin, a dietary carotenoid pigment found in many fruits and vegetables that is important for eye health, as an immunomodulator that enhances cytotoxicity of CD8+ T cells towards tumor cells. Oral zeaxanthin, but not lutein, a carotenoid with similar structure, enhances anti-tumor immunity in vivo. Integrated multi-omics mechanistic studies reveal that zeaxanthin directly promotes T-cell receptor (TCR) stimulation on CD8+ T cell surface, leading to improved intracellular TCR signaling for effector T cell function. Hence, zeaxanthin treatment augments effectiveness of immune checkpoint inhibitor in vivo and human TCR-engineered CD8+ T cells to induce cell death in co-cultured tumor cells. Our findings uncover a previously unknown immunoregulatory function of zeaxanthin, which has translational potential as a dietary element in immunotherapy.
Project description:This work investigates the effects of a prebiotic mix containing lutein, zeaxanthin, and saffron, recognized for their anti-inflammatory properties, on ophthalmological and microbial parameters in neovascular AMD (nAMD) patients.
Project description:Clonal fate of helper T cells is governed by early costimulatory signals but may also depend on the mode of TCR interaction with peptide-MHC on APCs. We investigate TCR repertoires of eight effector/memory CD4+ T-cell subsets (Th1, Th2, nonclassical Th2 (Th2a), Th17, Th1-17, Tfh, Treg, Th22), revealing subset-specific physicochemical and recombinational features reproducible across donors. At a threshold of 3 reads per UMI, the number of obtained UMI-labeled cDNA molecules per repertoire per sample ranged from 5,300 to 303,500, and the number of CDR3 clonotype variants at the nucleotide level per repertoire per sample ranged from 1,200 to 83,200. Deep unbiased TCR profiling allowed us to assess the natural level of in vivo CD4+ subsets plasticity. We observed a major clonal exchange between Th17/Th22/Th2/Th2a and the high stability of Treg and Tfh subsets. The latter two subsets also show higher repertoire publicity across donors. Tfh repertoire features reflect those of mature antibodies and indicate stringent selection of highly antigen-specific, low cross-reactive TCRs. We conclude that functional subsets are marked with non-random universal for donors and specific features of passed selection. In future TCR sequencing applications, subset-specific profiling could provide better insights of normal and pathological states of adaptive immunity compared to the classical approach when TCR profiling is performed on bulk T cells or after rough division into CD4 and CD8-enriched populations.