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| Reports on Overseas' Conferences and Meetings |
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Bulletin report
on
78th annual meeting of American Thyroid
Association |
| Yuji Nagayama, Department
of Medical Gene Technology |
78th annual meeting of
American Thyroid Association was held at
the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers
in New York City, USA on October 4 to 7,
2007. This hotel was located in the heart
of the city but pretty old. Therefore, the
air-conditioner did not work properly and
I saw wide mice running in the room in the
middle of night despite very expensive accommodation
fee. Drs. S. Yamashita and N. Mitsutake in
this Institute and also Dr. S. Maeda (a thyroid
surgeon) in Nagasaki Medical Center, Omura
participated in the meeting.
Although this meeting is relatively small
in size with thyroidologists from north America,
enthusiastic presentations and discussions
were performed from early morning symposium
to evening every day. In this meeting, numbers
of papers on thyroid cancer is increasing,
while those of thyroid autoimmunity decreasing
recent years. Regarding thyroid cancer research,
we found many interesting presentations such
as analysis of gene expression profiling of
mutant Braf transgenic mice, translation studies
on molecular targeted therapy, analysis of
intracellular signaling in cancer cells, and
etc. However, the symposium on thyroid stem
cells was a bit disappointing; most of data
shown were expression analysis of stem cell-markers
identified in other tissues/cells by RT-PCR.
In thyroid autoimmunity, interesting papers
include a novel therapeutic approach with
an immuno-modulatory molecule TRAIL (TNF-related
apoptosis-inducing ligand), and isolation
of human monoclonal anti-TSH receptor antibody
with blocking activity.
The following is the tile and abstract of
our poster presentation.
| | Nagayama Y, Nakahara M, Tone S, Abiru N.
Expression of Immuno-Regulatory Molecules
on the Thyrocytes Protects NOD-H2h4 Mice
from Developing Autoimmune Thyroiditis. |
As one of the therapeutic approaches against
autoimmune thyroid disease, we sought a potential
to protect the target tissue (thyroid) from
autoimmune reaction irrespective of its persistent
activity. To this end, the immuno-regulatory
molecules (TNF-related apoptosis-inducing
ligand, TRAIL and indoleamine 2, 3-deoxygenase,
IDO) were expressed on thyrocytes of NOD-H2h4 mice
which spontaneously develop thyroiditis using
recombinant adenovirus vectors. We found that
these procedures significantly suppressed
the degree of thyroiditis without altering
the titers of anti-thyroglobulin antibodies
or cytokine expression levels in spleen. These
data indicate that this kind of immunological
intervention, although it does not suppress
autoimmune reaction itself, may have a potential
for treating organ-specific autoimmune diseases. |
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