VUMC researchers found that peptides modified by highly reactive compounds called isolevuglandins activated T cells and promoted hypertension in mice. Their first-ever isolation of such peptides is a step toward potentially intervening in this pathologic process.
Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have developed a new computational and experimental approach to discover peptide antigens that cause hypertension by activating T cells.
Their findings, reported recently in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, could lead to new, more effective treatments for hypertension, a leading cause of death in the United States.
The first-ever isolation of specific hypertension-promoting peptides results from several lines of converging evidence, noted the paper’s corresponding author, David G. Harrison, MD, the Betty and Jack Bailey Professor of Cardiology and director of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology at VUMC.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of hypertension is the accumulation in the kidneys of cytotoxic immune cells, called CD8+ T cells, which normally seek out and destroy other cells in the body.
