On Oct 19, a review article entitled Anti-inflammatory and immune-regulatory cytokines in rheumatoid arthritisin Nature Reviews Rheumatology, which is a peer-reviewed medical journal of the Nature Publishing Group.
Rheumatoid arthritis is a common disabling autoimmune disease that seriously threatens human’s health. Currently, conventional treatments still rely on immunosuppression, often leading to the risk of over-inhibition of secondary infections and tumors. In recent years, it has been found that some anti-inflammatory cytokines have immune regulatory functions, which can induce the relief of arthritis from the perspective of promoting inflammation rather than inhibiting inflammation, brings new hope for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.
CHEN Zhu summarized the latest progress in the function and mechanism of anti-inflammatory and immune regulatory cytokines in the alleviation of rheumatoid arthritis by reviewing his previous doctoral research (2016) and recent important findings in Professor Schett's research group (Nature Medicine, 2017; Nature Communications, 2018, etc.) at University of Ellangen-Nuremberg, such as IL-4/IL-13/IL-5 mediated Th2 and eosinophil activation, IL-9 mediated ILC2 amplification, HIF1α mediated IL-10-production Breg activation, etc. Through in-depth study of anti-inflammatory immune regulatory cytokines and signaling pathways, we can improve treatment strategies from the perspective of promoting inflammation alleviation rather than simply inhibiting inflammation, which is expected to reduce the adverse reaction of over-immunosuppression caused by existing treatment and bring new strategies for the future treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. The work is currently funded by National Natural Science Foundation.
Nature Reviews Rheumatology covers all aspects of rheumatology and received an impact factor of 15.66 as reported in the latest Journal Citation Reports by Thomson Reuters, ranking first out of 30 journals in the category Rheumatology.
The School of Life Sciences and Medicine of USTC together with the Department of Rheumatology and Immunology of the First Affiliated Hospital of USTC are the first author affiliation. CHEN Zhu, Associate Chief Physician of Rheumatology and Immunology Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of University of Science and Technology of China and Postgraduate Tutor of the School of Life Sciences and Medicine, in collaboration with Professor Georg Schett of the University of Ellangen-Nuremberg, Germany, contributed to this research.
CHEN Zhu, Doctor of Medicine in Ellangen-Nuremberg University, Germany, postgraduate tutor of the School of Life Sciences and Medicine of USTC, candidate for the subject leaders in the First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, deputy director of rheumatic immunology, is currently engaged in postdoctoral work in New York Special Surgery Hospital, Cornell University, USA.
(Written by MAIREHABA Maimaitiming, edited by WU Qiran, USTC News Center)
