ERC funding: How muscle supports antiviral immunity

Skeletal muscle is not normally considered part of the immune system. However, scientists have long observed that the loss of muscle mass associated with chronic viral infections is often accompanied by dysfunction of T cells. The way in which muscle affects T cells in this process is as yet unknown.

Guoliang Cui is an expert on the cellular and metabolic signals that promote or suppress immune T cell function. He is studying the links between immune functions and chronic viral infection in mice. In the animals, he has found that skeletal muscle counteracts the dysfunction of T cells: CD8 T cells, also known as cytotoxic T cells, migrate from the spleen into the muscle, where their antiviral function and ability to proliferate are restored. The revitalized T cells return to the lymphoid organs and participate again in the defense against viral infection.

Funded by the ERC grant, Cui now wants to investigate in detail how the muscle affects the function of the T cells and how it directs their migration through the body. To this end, the immunologist has already identified a variety of candidate molecules that accumulate in the muscle and may be involved in these processes.

Cui has also observed that mice with especially high muscle mass through genetic engineering also harbor a particularly large number of exhausted T cells in their muscles - and, on the other hand, have a particularly low virus titer. So could it be that increasing muscle mass has the potential to improve immune responses to chronic infections? That's another question Cui now plans to address with the help of the ERC grant.

Guoliang Cui received his PhD from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai in 2010. He then worked in a research department at the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline until 2012. From 2012 to 2016, he went to Yale University as a postdoctoral fellow. Supported by a Helmholtz Young Investigator Award from the Helmholtz Association, he subsequently established the Junior Research Group T Cell Metabolism at DKFZ, which was transformed into a department at HI-TRON Mainz in 2021.

This year, 2 652 ERC Consolidator Grant applications were submitted, of which 313 (about twelve percent) were funded. With 61 approved applications across all disciplines, Germany is the frontrunner in this year's call.

* In HI-TRON Mainz, the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), TRON gGmbH as a subsidiary of the University Medical Center Mainz, the University Medical Center Mainz and the Johannes Guttenberg University Mainz cooperate. The aim of the partnership is to develop effective immunotherapies, identify new biomarkers for the treatment of tumor diseases and thus further advance personalized cancer therapy.