You can’t make a banana split without bananas. And you can’t generate stable regulatory T cells without Vitamin C or enzymes called TET proteins, it appears.
Regulatory T cells (Tregs) help control inflammation and autoimmunity in the body. Tregs are so important, in fact, that scientists are working to generate stable induced Tregs (iTregs) in vitro for use as treatments for autoimmune diseases as well as rejection to transplanted organs. Unfortunately, it has proven difficult to find the right molecular ingredients to induce stable iTregs.
Now scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology and Emory University School of Medicine report that Vitamin C and TET proteins can work together to give Tregs their life-saving power.
“Vitamin C can be used to stabilize iTregs generated in vitro,” says LJI Instructor Xiaojing Yue, Ph.D., who served as co-first author for the EMBO Reports…
