Sasanka Ramanadham, Ph.D., and collaborators, published an article entitled “Differential lipid signaling from CD4+ and CD8+ T cells contributes to Type 1 (T1D) diabetes development” in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Immunology.

Ramanadham is a professor in the UAB Department of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology and a senior scientist in the UAB Comprehensive Diabetes Center.

The CD4+ and CD8+ T cells infiltrate the islet micro-environment and perform critical functions to promote autoimmune beta cell death. As a result, insulin secretion is markedly decreased and this leads to T1D development.

The Ramanadham Lab previously identified a critical role for select lipid signaling in T1D development. They hypothesized that such signaling from CD4+ and CD8+ T cells contributes to T1D onset and tested this using mouse models of T1D and “adoptive transfer, flow cytometry, qPCR, imaging, lipidomics, and ex-vivo approaches.”

Their studies resulted in the first demonstration of an importance of CD4+ and CD8+ T cell-specific lipid signaling in T1D development. This was reflected in findings that select lipid signaling enhanced the inflammatory phenotype of the T-cells and intervening with such lipid signaling reduced T1D incidence.

The researchers posit that their “findings raise the possibility that targeting CD4+ and/or CD8+ T-cell select lipid signaling can be beneficial in mitigating T1D development.”

Other study authors include first author Tayleur D. White, Ph.D., Abdulaziz Almutairi, Ph.D., Ying Gai-Tusing, Daniel J. Stephenson, Benjamin D. Stephenson, Charles E. Chalfant, Ph.D., Xiaoyong Lei, Ph.D., Brian Lu, Ph.D., Bruce D. Hammock, Ph.D., and Teresa P. DiLorenzo, Ph.D.