Wednesday 14 October 2015

Controlling Inflammation: A view from NACFC

On the last day of the North American CF Conference this weekend, Dr Janet Allen, Director of Strategic Innovation at the Trust, attended a session focused on 'Anti-inflammatories in CF: Pathways to Therapeutics’. This session set the scene for a wider debate around the outcomes of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s working group on the topic. In her blog on the session, you can find out more about the human body’s immune response to inflammation and what this means for people with cystic fibrosis.

The question is: how do we control and fine tune our body’s inflammation response to infection? 

Following an infection in the lungs, the body’s defence inflammation system responds to fight the invading bugs. The immune defence system is complex, but the primary cells recruited to start the fight are a type of white blood cell called neutrophils. These cells are not normally found in the lung, but following the detection of infection vast numbers move into the lungs from the blood and start to fight the harmful bacteria. Neutrophils are professionals and usually have all the tools they need to eat/kill the bacteria. 

If they succeed, these cells do their job and then die in a very controlled way. Or, if they sense that they are losing the battle against the infection, they send out signals saying ‘We need help’. More neutrophils and other cells of the immune system are recruited, leading to further inflammation. In people with CF, it is thought that this signalling for help carries on longer than it should (the “off switch” does not function properly) and, as a result, there is more inflammation than is necessary. This additional information is thought to damage the lungs.  

So, we need neutrophils to fight the infection but their very activation can lead to lung damage. There are ways of turning neutrophils ’on’ to do this job, but equally important there are signals that turn the neutrophils ‘off’. Most anti-inflammatory drugs stop the ‘on’ signals, as until recently we have understood less well the ‘off’ signals.

The dilemma is how to control the neutrophils to attack the infection and then stop without sending out ’help’ signals. This is a fine balancing act. In addition, the clinical trials to assess effectiveness will be quite long unless more sensitive measures of lung function are developed, which would enable the use of shorter trials with fewer participants than is possible using current techniques.  

So, the symposium addressed some of these key questions: 

  • What are the best targets/drugs to test in CF inflammation?
  • How can we be sure we will not stop the neutrophils from fighting the infection?
  • What can we learn from previous studies?
  • How can we design clinical trials to shorten their duration and still get a clear result?             

The session was well attended by CF clinicians and researchers from around the world and helped stimulate discussion and focus attention on this important challenge ahead of publication of the CFF working group’s guidance. This work will inform future research and therapeutic development globally and help to ensure it is done in a way that is safe and brings maximum benefit to people with CF. 

Dr Janet Allen is a member of the CFF working group which brings together leading experts in CF inflammation from around the world

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