Institute of
bioorganic chemistry

Researches from the Laboratory of biocatalysis of IBCH RAS in collaboration with the Scripps Research Institute and Xiamen University demonstrated for the first time that targeting the CDR3 regions of malignant T cell clones by cell therapy is a viable approach to eliminate leukemia cells. The study was supported by RSF and published in Leukemia.

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Malfunctioning of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) is observed in various mental and neurodegenerative diseases, therefore, the search and design of nAChR ligands is of particular interest. Researchers from the Department of Molecular Neuroimmune Signalling of IBCH, Russian Academy of Sciences in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Florence (Italy) designed new nicotine analogues and revealed their high affinity for α4β2 and α7 nAChRs using radioligand binding assay. In the electrophysiological and calcium imaging experiments some selected compounds showed α7 and α3β2 agonistic properties, while on the α4β2, compounds 1a and 2a behaved as antagonists. Results of the study are published in Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

Regulatory T cells (Treg) is subpopulation of T helper lymphocytes which possesses immune suppressive properties. Treg are critical in protection from excessive immune response and autoimmunity. Unique functions of Treg are defined by transcription factor Fop3 that controls Treg-specific expression of genes. Dr. Yury Rubtsov from the Dept. of functioning of living systems in cooperation with colleagues from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York City) studied a role of Foxp3-related protein, Foxp1, specifically in the murine Treg. In the absence of Foxp1, Treg displayed distorted Foxp3 chromatin binding which led to decreased sensitivity of the cells to IL-2 and diminished suppressive capacity. Results of the study are published in Nature Immunology.

T-cell receptors (TCRs) play a key role in adaptive immunity. TCR repertoire is very diverse and unique to each individual because it forms in the stochastic DNA recombination process. The group of scientists from the Department of genomics of adaptive immunity in collaboration with ENS (Paris, France) studied TCR repertoires of identical twins after immunization with a live vaccine. In each donor, they identified about a thousand different T-cell clones responding to immunization. Responding clones have almost unique repertoire in each donor with higher overlap in identical twin pairs. The study was supported by RSF and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers from Molecular technologies laboratory (IBCh) in collaboration with Harvard medical school scientists developed a novel model of cardiac dysfunction caused by oxidative stress. This model is based on chemogenetics principles — enzymatic production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), stimulated by an external chemical substrate, and visualised by transgenic ROS sensor HyPer. The study is supported by Russian science foundation and published in Nature Communications.