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Antimicrobial effects mediated by the regulation of the local tryptophan concentration: diverse effects mediated by different tryptophan degrading enzymes in mice and men

Subject Area Immunology
Term from 2007 to 2014
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 21644054
 
Final Report Year 2016

Final Report Abstract

We analyzed the importance of Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) for the antiparasitic defense against T. gondii in different mammalians within this project. We found that interferon-gamma (IFN-ɣ induced IDO-mediated tryptophan degradation is an important antiparasitic defense mechanism in bovine, porcine and human cells. However, in murine cell cultures IDO is not, or only marginally, induced by IFN-ɣ whereas the inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and GTPases (IRGs and GBPs) are relevant in the defense against T. gondii. Additional in vivo studies in the mouse system showed that IDO is induced during toxoplasmosis, especially in lung tissue. Detailed analysis proved that the parasite load in the lungs of T. gondii infected IDO-deficient mice is significantly enhanced, indicating that IDO participates in the murine antimicrobial defense T. gondii. In the second part of the project we determined that in addition to IDO, the liver-specific enzyme tryptophan 2,3-dioxygenase (TDO) is also able to mediate antimicrobial effects. Furthermore, we found that TDO can cause immunosuppressive effects and might therefore participate in the creation of the “tolerogenic milieu” in the liver. In the third part of the project we discovered that IDO activity is tightly regulated by factors in the micromilieu. Hence, a reduced availability of oxygen dramatically reduced IDO activity in our in vitro studies. This fits well with our in vivo observation that IDO is especially active in the lung, since the highest oxygene pressure in the body is present in the lung. In addition, we found that an infection of human cells with cytomegalovirus (CMV) results in a profound inhibition of IDO activity. The functional loss of the immunosuppressive IDO activity resulted in an enhanced T cell activation. This might, at least in part, explain the high rejection rate of transplanted organs during active CMV infection.

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