Southampton collaboration reveals new insights into the human immune system
University of Southampton scientists have come up with new insights into the human immune system, which could eventually hold the key to developing diagnostic tools and new therapeutic interventions for cancer, autoimmune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and bacterial infections such as lime disease and tuberculosis.
An interdisciplinary collaboration, involving biological scientists and chemists as well as medical researchers at the University has discovered more about how the immune system presents cholesterol fats such as the lipid cholesteryl ester to T lymphocytes. The fruits of their nine years of research, have now been published in the academic journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and centre on the CD1 molecules, found in human blood and tissues.
The research began in 2007 in the group of Professor Stephan Gadola in Medicine and continues under Dr Salah Mansour.
At Southampton’s Centre for Biological Sciences, crystallography was used to reveal the molecular architecture of CD1c in 2011. “Crystallography allows us to get an image of our biomolecules at an atomic resolution to understand how they fit together,” explains Dr Ivo Tews . "This helps to define how lipid antigen presentation by CD1c works". In Chemistry, the groups of Professors Jon Essex and Chris Skylaris have used the atomic model to test a number of different lipid classes in computer simulations. The final identified cholesteryl esters were verified by Dr Mansour as true CD1c ligands.
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Dr Salah Mansour BSc, MSc, PhD
Dr Salah Mansour is Principal Research Fellow (Associate Professor) within Medicine at the University of Southampton. He leads a research group that employs a multidisciplinary approach to study the biological functions of CD1 molecules and their “unconventional” lipid reactive T cells. This has broad relevance to human diseases, including tuberculosis, cancer, and autoimmune conditions.
His interest into antigen presentation started with a PhD in molecular Immunology focussing on the MHC class I pathway at Barts Medical School, Queen Mary University of London. After a short stint in industry, he joined Stephan Gadola’s group in Southampton in 2008 as postdoc, before forming his own group in 2013.
His lab combines basic interdisciplinary and translational studies that aim to improve our understanding of CD1 mediated immunity to help develop novel therapeutic targets and diagnostics for patient benefit. Current active funding is from HEFCE, CRUK, MRC, IfLS and PHE.
He has developed strong collaborations with computational and synthetic chemists, structural biologists, and with tuberculosis and cancer clinicians. He also has strong links with Public Health England Porton Down (Dr Sally Sharpe), King’s College London, The Francis Crick Institute, and the Africa Research Institute in Durban.
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Dr Ivo Tews PhD, PD
Dr Ivo Tews is Lecturer in Structural Biology within Biological Sciences at the University of Southampton.
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Professor Chris-Kriton Skylaris MChem, PhD, FRSC, FHEA
Chris-Kriton Skylaris is Professor of Computational Chemistry at the University of Southampton.
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Professor Jonathan W Essex BA (MA) DPhil
Professor Jonathan W Essex is Professor of Computational Systems Chemistry within Chemistry at the University of Southampton.
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