Biology subjects

Adriaensen, W.

Publications and source records attributed to Adriaensen, W..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Multi-drug tolerance in Leishmania persister-like cells

Leishmaniasis is caused by parasitic protozoa of the genus Leishmania and is found widely across the tropics and sub-tropics, afflicting hundreds of thousands of people. The disease is notoriously difficult to treat. Here, we present evidence of the existence of persister-like cells in cultured Leishmania populations, induced upon exposure to normally lethal doses of antimony, a widely used anti-leishmanial. Persisters are a small fraction of non-proliferative cells with reduced metabolism that are adapted to withstand a variety of environmental assaults, including lethal doses of antimicrobials. We show that Leishmania persister-like cells survive lethal doses of antimonials by adopting a quiescence phenotype characterised by reduced proliferation, constrained metabolism, and diminished mitochondrial membrane potential. What is more, these cells demonstrate cross-tolerance to other anti-leishmanial drugs. Wild-type persister-like cells reverted to similar levels of drug susceptibility once the antimony-induced pressure was removed. Surprisingly, cells which had previously been selected for genetic changes causing resistance to antimony acquired a level of hyper-resistance after transient passage through the quiescent state, without further genetic change. Our results demonstrate the extreme versatility of this eukaryotic pathogen in adaptation to drug pressure and highlight the need for the development of new anti-leishmanials targeting non-proliferative forms.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2025

Generation of a T cell receptor, cytokine and cell repertoire synovial fluid atlas to define commonalities and dissimilarities between arthritic diseases through systems immunology approaches

Although different chronic arthritic diseases are defined by clinical factors like gender, psoriasis and auto-antibodies, the biology of inflamed joints while comparing the different diseases remains neglected. Here, after curating an inflamed joint derived T-cell receptor (TCR) database, our new TRIASSIC tool identified 66303 significantly convergent TCR clonotypes. Clustering TCR clonotypes showed that synovial fluid convergence clusters (SFCCs) characterized HLA-B27+ mediated diseases (spondyloarthritis, SpA, and enthesitis-related juvenile idiopathic arthritis, JIA-ERA), Lyme arthritis and oligoarticular JIA. Single-cell transcriptomics and bulk proteomics showed upregulated interferon type I and II and TNF- pathways in oJIA. Adult and juvenile psoriatic arthritis, (JIA-)PsA, was characterized by upregulated HSP expression in monocytes and TXNIP in T-cells. We discovered an abundance of CCL5 expressing CD8+ T-cells in SF from HLA-B27+ JIA-ERA and SpA patients. JIA-ERA patients showed upregulation of CD74 and LGALS1 in Th1 and Th17 cells and IGHV7-4.1 in B-cells. oJIA patients shared a TRBV28 RG-motif on CXCL13 producing helper T-cells. Rheumatoid arthritis and (JIA-)PsA patients carried EBV-reactive cytotoxic CD8+ T-cells. Annexin signalling was shown to be important in the intercellular communication for all arthritis groups. Collectively, our work showed that chronic arthritis is characterized by both disease-specific and broadly shared mechanisms.

immunology↗

bioRxiv2021

Predicted epitope binding core motifs and common amino acid polymorphisms distinguish protective- from susceptibility-associated HLA alleles in leishmaniasis

Susceptibility for leishmaniasis is largely dependent on genetic- and immune factors of the host. Despite the previously described association of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) gene cluster variants as genetic susceptibility factors, little is known on the mechanisms that mediate these associations. To characterize the functionality underpinning these associations between HLA and disease, we predicted the epitope binding repertoires for all known leishmaniasis-associated HLA variants collected in a thorough literature review. We identified several amino acid polymorphisms in the HLA sequences that distinguished protective-from risk-associated HLA-DRB1 alleles. Proteome-wide and multi-species T cell epitope binding predictions were carried out across these alleles, enabling us to map the effects on the epitope binding repertoires. The protective-associated HLA-DRB1 alleles were characterized by common binding core motifs, which map to the identified amino acid polymorphisms. These results strongly suggest that polymorphism in the HLA region, resulting in differential antigen presentation, affects the association between HLA and leishmaniasis disease development. Finally, we established a valuable open-access resource of putative epitopes, of which a set of 14 HLA-unrestricted strong-binding epitopes, conserved across species, were prioritized for further epitope discovery in the search for novel subunit-based vaccines.

immunology↗