Browsing by Subject "Immunosuppressive"

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    Autophagy in the immunosuppressive perivascular microenvironment of glioblastoma
    (MDPI, 2019-12-31) Molina Gallego, María Luisa; Martínez Pérez, Salvador; García Bernal, David; Valdor Alonso, Rut; Bioquímica y Biología Molecular B e Inmunología
    Glioblastoma (GB) has been shown to up-regulate autophagy with anti- or pro-oncogenic effects. Recently, our group has shown how GB cells aberrantly up-regulate chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA) in pericytes of peritumoral areas to modulate their immune function through cell-cell interaction and in the tumor’s own benefit. Thus, to understand GB progression, the effect that GB cells could have on autophagy of immune cells that surround the tumor needs to be deeply explored. In this review, we summarize all the latest evidence of several molecular and cellular immunosuppressive mechanisms in the perivascular tumor microenvironment. This immunosuppression has been reported to facilitate GB progression and may be differently modulated by several types of autophagy as a critical point to be considered for therapeutic interventions.
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    Pericytes, a cell type contributing to autoimmunity and immune tolerance
    (Elsevier, 2023-06-16) Botía Sánchez, María; Molina, María Luisa; Aparicio, Pedro; Valdor Alonso, Rut; Bioquímica y Biología Molecular B e Inmunología
    Pericytes have been, since their discovery, a very hard-to-define cell because of their unknown ontogeny and the lack of specific markers. As a consequence, several attempts to characterize both its molecular pattern and its metabolism have been carried out to describe the physiological role they play. Pericytes are located in the abluminal wall of small vessels and contribute to the maintenance of capillary tone and the regulation of oxygen flow to adjacent tissues, maintaining the homeostasis of the blood-brain barrier. Furthermore, they have been described as cells with immunological properties, being able to sense and secrete proinflammatory and antiinflammatory cytokines and to activate T cells, hence controlling the immune response. Interestingly, pericytes immune function might be modulated through molecular mechanisms such as chaperone-mediated autophagy, making them to convert from immunogenic to immunosuppressive cells contributing in autoimmunity and immune tolerance. The failure of the different pericytes functions which are implicated in the brain homeostasis is related with several pathologies associated to inflammation, including type 2 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer. In these scenarios, pericytes have always been proved as mediators of the pathology, which indicates that this barely-known type of cell might have a wide variety of unknown roles.