In the clinical observation of the treatment of COVID-19 disease caused by the new coronavirus, doctors found that severe immune system of severe patients may have a "cytokine storm", which has a negative impact on health.
When the immune system is working properly, immune cells are a powerful ally of humans. However, when the reaction is overreacted, the result may be fatal. The good news is that researchers at MIT have designed an engineered protein that can alleviate the cytokine storm.
As shown in the picture above, the pink dots represent the released inflammatory cytokines, which can trigger inflammation when injured or encountered a pathogen to help the body recover.
However, in the case of severe infection, the human body may fall into a feedback loop in which inflammatory cytokines are released more and more, eventually causing serious negative effects.
This fatal phenomenon is called cytokine release syndrome (CRS), sometimes called cytokine storm.
It may be caused by severe infections such as sepsis, Ebola virus, avian influenza, testimonials, and recent cases of COVID-19.
This situation can also occur in human tissue after transplantation or due to the toxic side effects of CAR-T cancer immunotherapy.
The good news is that the MIT research team has found a way to treat this potentially deadly disease.
The researchers used a method called QTY code to create a water-soluble protein that can bind to cytokines.
Research senior author Rui Qing said that their idea is to inject it into the patient's experience, allowing the engineered protein to combine with excess substances produced by the cytokine storm to reduce or even eliminate the symptoms of infection.
These proteins can mimic six different cytokine receptors and bind to interferons, interleukins, and chemokines.
At the same time, an antibody fragment called an Fc region is connected, which helps the protein to stay in the blood for a longer time without being cleared or degraded by the immune system.
Early experiments have shown that the binding capacity of engineered proteins to cytokines is as strong as natural receptors.
Follow-up animal experiments will be carried out and the effects will be observed in human cell culture models infected with COVID-19.
Details of this research have been published in the recently published Quarterly Review of Biophysics.
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