Did you get your Hear Attack Vaccine yet this year?

Every fall in my workplace, the flu shot question circles the water cooler. One I’ve never heard yet is “Did you get your atherosclerosis vaccine?”. Sounds far fetched, but some researchers in La Jolla, CA might not agree. Dr. Klaus Ley has led a study which may take us closer to a vaccine for arterial plaque development or subsequent plaque rupture. Let’s work through the thought experiment with the knowledge we have gained in this course thus far. The adaptive immune system has been previously suspected of involvement with development of arterial plaque. However, there are no lymphatic draining nodes in arterial plaques, so there has been doubt that APC’s would be able to migrate to lymph nodes from arterial plaques to activate t-cells.  Dr. Ley and his team have demonstrated ex-vivo that specific types of dendritic cells and Th1 cells with certain MHC genes can have productive interactions in the plaque itself. This leads to t-cell proliferation and production of IFN-gamma. The subsequently recruited macrophages are then able to uptake circulating LDL particles and differentiate into foam cells (increases plaque formation). Dr. Ley is most excited at this discovery due to the evidence that the interaction between memory t-cells and APC’s with specific markers may be involved in aggressive plaque formation. Past studies have shown that increased levels of Treg and decreased levels of specific Th1 cells are associated with decreased plaque formation in animals models. Is it possible that plaque formation is an adaptive rather than an innate process? What if we could stimulate an appropriate innane immune response to supersede the Th1 activation? As we try to shift immunotherapy to specific antigen’s and other immunomolecules, it will become more vital to identify the specific molecules and their traits involved in immunologic interactions which give rise to adverse health conditions.I don't think the vaccine will be ready for next year...but knowing that memory t-cells play a role gives me hope that the mechanism for the vaccine exists, if we can only understand enough about the interactions...

Journal Reference:

1.      Ekaterina K. Koltsova, Zacarias Garcia, Grzegorz Chodaczek, Michael Landau, Sara McArdle, Spencer R. Scott, Sibylle von Vietinghoff, Elena Galkina, Yury I. Miller, Scott T. Acton, Klaus Ley. Dynamic T cell–APC interactions sustain chronic inflammation in atherosclerosis. Journal of Clinical Investigation, 2012; DOI: 10.1172/JCI61758