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Human T cell function declines with age, reducing the ability of vaccines to protect the elderly against infectious disease.
Scientists have identified a protein that may represent a target for the design of drugs capable of re-energizing the immune system in elderly people. It’s well recognized that as we age our immune systems become weaker, and less effective at beating chronic infections and, critically, responding to potentially life-saving vaccination. Current approaches to improving vaccine responses are focused primarily on antigen presentation by increasing antigen dose. However, Stanford University School of Medicine investigators have now found that blocking the dual-specific phosphatase DUSP6 in naive CD4+ T cells in elderly people allows the cells to respond in a much more sprightly manner to presented antigens.
