OCRID investigator, Dr. Xia finds a new way to treat bacterial and viral infections
02/17/2015
Two Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation scientists have made new findings related to blood vessel function and inflammation, key factors in infections as well as a host of conditions from cancer to kidney and autoimmune disease.
The findings by Lijun Xia, M.D., Ph.D., and Rodger McEver, M.D., could point the way to the development of new methods for preventing and treating bacterial and viral infections.
Xia discovered a new way that lymph nodes, which act as monitors and filters for pathogens that enter the body, respond to challenges to the immune system.
“We found that a particular molecule called podoplanin is essential in making lymph nodes regulate their environment so more white blood cells, the body’s infection fighters, can come in during inflammation or following vaccination,” said Xia, who holds the Merrick Foundation Chair in Biomedical Research at OMRF.
“In the future, these findings may help us make vaccines more efficient or enable us to develop new therapies to help the body fight pathogens and infections.”
Xia also found how a common form of protein modification plays an important role in protecting podoplanin in lymphatic vessels, which is important for transporting immune cells.
“Using these results, we can move toward developing therapies that help maintain healthy vessel function during inflammation or immune responses,” said Xia, who published his new findings in the journals Blood and Nature Immunology.
Other OMRF scientists who contributed to Xia’s research are Yanfang Pan, Tadayuki Yago, Jianxin Fu, Kai Song, Yuji Kondo, Brett Herzog, Mike McDaniel and Hong Chen.