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The Immunity, Inflammation and Cancer research group of the University of Murcia (UMU) and the Murcian Institute for Biosanitary Research (IMIB), led by Victoriano Mulero, studies in this case anemia associated with cr inflammations.
Unique and Diamond-Blackfan anemia, hereditary and affecting 4-5 people per million, classified as a rare disease, and which currently has no effective treatments.
Anemia associated with chronic diseases, such as chronic inflammatory diseases and cancer, is very common.
This study has recently shown that the inflammasome, a set of proteins found in the immune system involved in activating inflammation, is capable of destroying the GATA1 protein.
In those chronic diseases in which this set of proteins is overactive, the amount of GATA1 is greatly reduced, contributing to trigger anemia, which would explain why patients do not respond to iron supplements.
Therefore, both anemia associated with chronic inflammation and Diamond-Blackfan anemia, share the deficiency in GATA1, generated by different causes, but both could be treated with inflammasome inhibitors to raise the protein GATA1.
"These drugs are currently in the clinical phase, such as vaccines for coronavirus, and in fact our group is also developing new inhibitors," says Victoriano Mulero.
The results obtained could help improve the quality of life of patients with certain diseases, and the development of new therapeutic targets.
"Although these drugs are currently being developed to treat inflammatory diseases, we propose them to treat anemias as well", adds the researcher.
For this study, zebrafish has been used as a research model, since it allows us to study the formation process of blood cells in real time, as it is transparent and allows the effect of a large number of compounds to be analyzed.
natural chemicals or chemicals already approved for medical use.
Anemia affects 24.8% of the world population Anemia is a lack of healthy red blood cells, the blood cells that carry oxygen to all tissues and organs in the body.
Anemias are very common: according to the World Health Organization (WHO), they affect 1.620 million people, representing 24.8% of the world's population and represent a significant public expenditure for health systems.
There are many types of anemia, the most common being caused by a lack of iron and is called iron deficiency anemia.
Iron is a metal that contains the majority protein of red blood cells, hemoglobin, and which is responsible for binding oxygen and transporting it from the lungs to the rest of the tissues.
The results of this study have been published in the high-impact journal Immunity.
The novelty of this research has been reflected in the invitation by the editor of Trends in Immunology to write a review describing the advantages of zebrafish as a model to study the impact of the inflammasome on hematopoiesis and recent contributions in the field.
Source: Universidad de Murcia
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