INVESTIGATING THE POTENTIAL OF T CELLS ISOLATED FROM JUVENILE THYMUSES FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF ALLOGENEIC THERAPIES FOR AUTOIMMUNE CONDITIONS (SELECT)

Anais Makos, Lesley Smyth^†, Rafael R Guerrero*, Dan Hawcutt*, Oksana Kehoe

^†University of East London, ^*Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool

Funded by the Orthopaedic Institute

One in every 16 of people in the UK live with an autoimmune condition causing them pain, difficulty, lost opportunities in work and in life, and in many cases placing them at risk of early death.  Autoimmunity occurs when the immune system attacks the body. Regulatory cells (also called Tregs) are cells of immune system which have a role in regulating or suppressing other cells in the immune system. In collaboration with the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital (Liverpool, UK), we collected juvenile thymus tissue from children undergoing cardiac surgery. From this, we successfully isolated Tregs and their EVs, which were characterised (Figure 10). Our ongoing work aims to assess, in vitro, the ability of Tregs and their EVs to suppress effector T-cell proliferation, which is a potential novel therapeutic approach for immune-mediated disease.