科学家发现，已经用于抑制人类骨髓移植后的炎症反应的多能干细胞可能也有助于治疗严重哮喘患者。Eva Mezey及其同事为豚草诱发哮喘的小鼠注射了骨髓基质细胞（BMSC，一种多能干细胞），结果发现这种细胞保护了小鼠不出现严重过敏和哮喘症状。
这组作者提出，这种保护效果很可能是由于这种细胞让人体典型的两阶段炎症反应恢复正常的能力，这种炎症反应在严重哮喘的情况下常常变得不平衡。哮喘是一种影响全世界3亿人的慢性炎症呼吸道疾病，尽管与哮喘有关的死亡目前并不常见，治疗严重哮喘的疗法在很大程度上不能充分解决患者的症状。
这组作者提出，由于BMSCs已经用于治疗自体免疫疾病，该论文报告的这种细胞疗法可以提供帮助治疗哮喘和其他严重过敏疾病的方法。
原文出处：
PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.0910720107
Bone marrow stromal cells use TGF-β to suppress allergic responses in a mouse model of ragweed-induced asthma
Krisztian Nemetha,b,1, Andrea Keane-Myersc, Jared M. Brownc, Dean D. Metcalfec, Jared D. Gorhamd, Victor G. Bundocc, Marcus G. Hodgesc, Ivett Jelineke, Satish Madalac, Sarolta Karpatib, and Eva Mezeya,1
Bone marrow stromal cells [BMSCs; also known as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs)] effectively suppress inflammatory responses in acute graft-versus-host disease in humans and in a number of disease models in mice. Many of the studies concluded that BMSC-driven immunomodulation is mediated by the suppression of proinflammatory Th1 responses while rebalancing the Th1/Th2 ratio toward Th2. In this study, using a ragweed induced mouse asthma model, we studied if BMSCs could be beneficial in an allergic, Th2-dominant environment. When BMSCs were injected i.v. at the time of the antigen challenge, they protected the animals from the majority of asthma-specific pathological changes, including inhibition of eosinophil infiltration and excess mucus production in the lung, decreased levels of Th2 cytokines (IL-4, IL-5, and IL-13) in bronchial lavage, and lowered serum levels of Th2 immunoglobulins (IgG1 and IgE). To explore the mechanism of the effect we used BMSCs isolated from a variety of knockout mice, performed in vivo blocking of cytokines and studied the effect of asthmatic serum and bronchoalveolar lavage from ragweed challenged animals on the BMSCs in vitro. Our results suggest that IL-4 and/or IL-13 activate the STAT6 pathway in the BMSCs resulting in an increase of their TGF-β production, which seems to mediate the beneficial effect, either alone, or together with regulatory T cells, some of which might be recruited by the BMSCs. These data suggest that, in addition to focusing on graft-versus-host disease and autoimmune diseases, allergic conditions—specifically therapy resistant asthma—might also be a likely target of the recently discovered cellular therapy approach using BMSCs.
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