New immune cells hint at eczema cause

University of Sydney researchers have discovered a new type of immune cell in skin that plays a role in fighting off parasitic invaders such as ticks, mites, and worms, and could be linked to eczema and allergic skin diseases. The findings have been published today in the journal Nature Immunology.

The team from the Immune Imaging and T cell Laboratories at the University-affiliated Centenary Institute worked with colleagues from SA Pathology in Adelaide, the Malaghan Institute in Wellington, New Zealand and the USA.

The new cell type is part of a family known as group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2) which was discovered less than five years ago in the gut and the lung, where it has been linked to asthma.

Dr Ben Roediger, a research officer in the Centenary's Immune Imaging Laboratory said this was the first time such cells had been found in the skin, and they are relatively more numerous there.

"Our data show that these skin ILC2 cells can likely supress or stimulate inflammation under different conditions," he said.

"They also suggest a potential link to allergic skin diseases."

Head of the laboratory, Professor Wolfgang Weninger said: "There is a great deal we don't understand about the debilitating skin conditions of allergies and eczema, but they affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Dermal ILC2 cells could be the clue we need to start unravelling the causes of these diseases."

The Weninger lab, which has developed techniques for marking different cells of the immune system and tracking them live under the microscope, actually discovered the new dermal cells some years back.

"We just didn't know what they were," Dr Roediger said.

The Centenary researchers, however, suspected they might be associated with type 2 immunity, the part of the immune system that deals with infection by parasitic organisms. So they contacted Professor Graham Le Gros at the Malaghan Institute, one of the world's foremost researchers into type 2 immunity.

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New immune cells hint at eczema cause