A Notch too far: Tregs in tissue inflammation and autoimmunity

Il 18/12/2025 ore 14.30 - 16.00

CNR Conference Room
Area della Ricerca NA1
Via P. Castellino, 111 Naples

Seminar of Raffaele De Palma (Unit of Clinical Immunology and Translational Medicine, IRCCS Ospedale Policlinico San Martino, and Department of Internal Medicine, University of Genova, Italy)

Abstract - Immune system has a critical role in acute and chronic human diseases. Lack of adequate and/or appropriate immune responses determine both susceptibility to infections and chronic inflammation. The understanding of immune responses is a key step to improve clinical and therapeutic handling of diseases, a complex task since individual Immune Systems are widely different due to gene differences and interaction of individuals with infections and environmental factors.  Immune responses take places in the organs orchestrated by tissue mechanisms. Foxp3+Regulatory T (TR) cells play a requisite role in peripheral immunological tolerance. Their function must be continually tuned to allow tissue-specific protective immune responses while preventing chronic inflammation and autoimmunity. Recently, it has been shown that several mechanisms may subvert tissue TR function to promote disease. For instance, given Notch receptors specifically reprogram TR cells to "license" tissue inflammatory responses. Therefore, it is likely that tissue TR cell plasticity fulfills a physiological role by negatively regulating TR suppressive and repair programs to ensure optimal immune responses to pathogens. When misdirected, such plasticity leads to immune dysregulation, inflammation and autoimmunity. Chronic tissue inflammatory diseases, including those triggered by pathogens or in the context of autoimmune and degenerative diseases represent a huge medical and societal burden. Their initiation and persistence in the face of stringent immunoregulatory constraints, most notably those imposed by regulatory T (TR) cells, implies disease-associated mechanisms that disable or subvert those constraints, whose characterization can lead to precision therapies tailored on the single patient.

Organizzato da:
Cnr - Istituto di Biochimica e Biologia Cellulare
CNR Immunology Network (CIN)

Referente organizzativo:
Maria Rosaria Coscia
CNR - Istituto di Biochimica e Biologia Cellulare
mariarosaria.coscia@ibbc.cnr.it

Modalità di accesso: ingresso libero