Sugar is not just for tea! Sweet tasting fibroblasts in inflammatory Rheumatoid Arthritis.
In healthy joints, Synovial Fibroblasts (SFs) provide the required stromal support, but are recognized to adopt a pathological role in rheumatoid arthritis, delivering region-specific signals to infiltrating cells that perpetuate inflammation. Interventions targeting SFs would improve current systemic therapies by directly modifying disease progression. Unfortunately, our collective understanding of stromal immunology has not been translated to the clinic and new strategies are needed to find novel therapeutic targets. The vast, and yet unexploited amount of information contained in cell glycomes could offer such molecular targets, as glycans – or carbohydrates – are being increasingly recognized as fundamental regulators of cellular interactions between stromal and immune cells. Our results show that transformation of SFs into pro-inflammatory cells in arthritis is associated with glycan remodelling in response to pro-inflammatory mediators, a process that involves regulation of terminal sialylation. Implications for changes in glycosylation pathways in disease progression and remission will be discussed.
Date: 18 November 2019, 12:00 (Monday, 6th week, Michaelmas 2019)
Venue: Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, Headington OX3 7FY
Venue Details: Bernard Sunley Lecture Theatre
Speaker: Dr Miguel Pineda (ARUK Research Fellow, University of Glasgow)
Organising department: Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences (NDORMS)
Organisers: Jennifer Pope (Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology), Professor Irina Udalova (Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology)
Organiser contact email address: jennifer.pope@kennedy.ox.ac.uk
Host: Professor Kim Midwood (Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology)
Part of: Kennedy Institute Seminars
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editor: Jennifer Pope