Wendy Roberts co-authors paper in the 'Annals of Neurology'
In August, Wendy K. Roberts, Ph.D., assistant lecturer in the Department of Biology, published an article titled “A Destructive Feedback Loop Mediated by CXCL10 in Central Nervous System Inflammatory Disease“ in the Annals of Neurology. The work is the result of a collaborative research effort with co-authors Robert Darnell, Nathalie Blachere and Mayu Frank at the Rockefeller University in New York City and Richard Ransohoff at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.
In the article, the authors report their findings of elevated levels of an inflammatory chemokine in patients with paraneoplastic neurologic disorders (PNDs). PNDs are rare autoimmune diseases associated with the recognition of a cancer by the immune system and an autoimmune attack of normal brain cells. PND patients experience a variety of neurological symptoms such as loss of motor coordination and sensory neuropathy.
The article describes the observation that treatment of patients with the immunosuppressant tacrolimus correlated with decreased levels of the chemokine, and it goes on to identify T cells as a cellular source. The authors suggest that treatment of PND patients with tacrolimus in combination with other therapies that prevent T cell access to the central nervous system may slow the progression of this debilitating set of disorders.