Development of novel anti-inflammatory agents using chemokine inhibitors found in parasitic ticks

Introduction

Evasins are salivary proteins found in parasitic ticks which are known to be capable of inhibiting of inflammatory reactions precipitated by chemokines. Evasins are increasingly being explored as anti-inflammatory agents to be used in therapeutic use in humans. A3 evasins are found in tick genus Amblyomma and are being explored as anti-inflammatory therapy agents by the researchers.

Research

Therapeutic chemokine inhibitors have long been unsuccessful in preventing and suppressing inflammatory reactions due to the body recruiting multiple classes of chemokines at a time to precipitate an inflammatory reaction. Parasites, however, have long been known to inhibit all these chemokines using broad-spectrum chemokine inhibitors, A3 evasins being identified as one of those are showing positive results of significantly reducing inflammatory reactions in the patient when administered.

The researchers further uncovered different structure-activity relationships of the chemokines and the evasins to better understand their binding patterns and their extent of inhibition on modification of the naturally found evasin to optimize it for therapeutic use in humans.

Conclusion

It was concluded that the A3 subclass of tick evasins are best at inhibiting a broad spectrum of inflammatory chemokines, better than other subclasses possible due to the CC motif being more rigid in A3 than in A1 subclass of tick evasins. These A3 tick evasins can be employed as new therapeutic broad-spectrum inhibitors of inflammatory chemokines.

Reference

Engineering broad-spectrum inhibitors of inflammatory chemokines from subclass A3 tick evasins https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-39879-3

Shankar Raj Devkota, Pramod Aryal, Rina Pokhrel, Wanting Jiao, Andrew Perry, Santosh Panjikar, Richard J. Payne, Matthew C. J. Wilce, Ram Prasad Bhusal & Martin J. Stone

Nature Communications, 14 July 2023

By Vinit Chaudhary