In the gut, dozens of strains of bacteria exert different effects on the immune system that in turn impact our health – fending off pathogens, helping digest food and maybe even influencing behavior. But pinpointing which bacteria exert which effects has been challenging.
American Association for the Advancement of Science Jul 4 2024 For developing a method by which to zero in on individual gut bacterium's impacts on T cells, Kazuki Nagashima, a senior research scientist at Stanford University, is the winner of this year's NOSTER & Science Microbiome Prize, which rewards innovative research by young investigators working on attributes of the microbiota with potential to guide therapeutic interventions.
"For the NOSTER/Science Prize, 2024 has been a truly blockbuster year in more ways than one," said Caroline Ashle, senior editor at Science. "It is heartening to see such high quality science from a new generation of extremely motivated young scientists, who succeed in doing fantastic research despite today's huge challenges."
But the question of how gut T cells interact with a full gut microbiome – all the different bacterial species – remained open. To explore this further, Nagashima and his colleagues evaluated the responses of T cells from mice to each bacterial member of the synthetic gut microbiome. "We cocultured T cells with each strain in the bacterial community-;one at a time," he explained.
Looking at T cell responses to each of the strains, however, they observed something intriguing. Contrary to what was expected, some T cells were stimulated by multiple bacterial strains. The understanding of the power of these particular T cells, as they interact with the gut, holds therapeutic implications, including for improving cancer therapies involving CAR T cells.
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