Developing cell therapy to prevent heart transplant rejection

Targeting Nox2 to improve regulatory T cell function and immune tolerance in heart transplantation

When someone’s heart is failing, a transplant is sometimes the only treatment option. However, the new heart can be rejected by the body’s immune response, even when medicines are taken to try and prevent this. Professor Shah and his team at King’s College London are trying to develop a new way of preventing this rejection using a type of immune cell called regulatory T cells, or Tregs. Tregs are known to be good at dampening down the immune response. In this project, they will try to make Tregs even more effective at doing this by altering some of the molecules found within them. The team’s previous research in cells grown in the lab suggests that Tregs that lack a molecule called Nox2 are better at reducing the immune response. However, the heart is much more complicated than cells in a dish so to explore this further, they will remove Nox2 from Tregs in mice, and see how this affects whether a heart transplant is rejected. They will also study the importance of Nox2 in human Tregs, with the hope that Tregs without Nox2 could be used in the future to help prevent heart transplant rejection.