Could ‘Pepitem’, which suppresses excessive immune response, become a natural anti-aging agent?
An interesting study has shown that peptides that occur naturally in our bodies can help restore the immune response of the elderly and suppress ‘inflammation’, which is widely known as the root cause of many age-related diseases. This is based on a paper by researchers at the University of Birmingham in the UK published in the Nature Partner Journal Ageing (njp Aging) on the 18th (local time), reported the medical media outlet Medical Express.
Peptides are biological components made up of two or more amino acids that perform various functions in our bodies. A polypeptide made up of 50 or more amino acids is a protein.
Researchers at the University of Birmingham discovered a natural peptide named PEPITEM (peptide that inhibits migration through endothelial cells) in 2015. In a healthy immune system, PEPITEM regulates the movement of immune cells between the blood and body tissues, ensuring that the immune response is not excessive. In autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, and lupus, the PEPITEM pathway is not properly regulated, increasing the movement of immune cells into tissues and causing chronic inflammation.
This study is the first to show that this pepitem has the potential to increase healthy lifespan in the aging population, acting as a protective agent that can alleviate age-related inflammation and restore normal immune function in older people.
The researchers investigated the effects of Pepitem on white blood cell (leukocyte) migration in young and old mice. The results showed that the old mice showed an overreaction in terms of the number, subtypes, and migration of immune cells, including T cells, a type of white blood cell, but when Pepitem was administered, the overreaction was suppressed. This suggests that the activation of the Pepitem pathway decreases with age.
The researchers also investigated potential causes of the age-related decline in P-pepitem activity using B cells, also a type of white blood cell, taken from donors under 45 and over 60. P-pepitem is derived from a larger protein secreted by B cells, and its production is stimulated by a hormone called adiponectin, which is produced by fat cells. In the bloodstream, P-pepitem acts on receptors on cells that line the walls of blood vessels.
The researchers found that the signaling pathway that triggers the production of the parent protein, pepitem (14-3-3ζ), was defective in B cells from older people. “We showed that the pepitem-adiponectin pathway is less active with age, and we also demonstrated its effect on T cell migration, as seen in inflammation,” said Miriam Chimen, a senior research fellow at the University of Birmingham and one of the study’s lead authors. She said this raised the exciting possibility that pepitem could be developed as an anti-aging agent that could help reduce excessive inflammation in old age while also supporting immune function.
The paper can be found at the following link (
Source: kormedi.com
