Efeitos imunomodulatórios de peptídeos com ação semelhante à IL-10 e ao TGF-β1 em processos inflamatórios

Abstract

The allergic response is characterized by the recognition of allergens and activation of the immune system. An allergen, when it breaks the physical barrier, will activate cells to produce inflammatory cytokines, differentiate T lymphocytes into a Th2 profile, activate B lymphocytes to produce IgE, and release inflammatory molecules. Once triggered, this process will further activate the immune system to exacerbate this response, thus promoting a whole mechanism that is uncomfortable for the patient. Currently, the main treatment performed is immunotherapy (IT), where specific doses of allergens are administered to patients in order to develop a tolerant response. IT promotes an effective effect since it is able to promote the differentiation of Tregs, reducing the production of specific allergen IgE. This treatment is long and can generate adverse effects, therefore the need to develop new IT methodologies that can generate a stable response, reducing the time of treatment, besides promoting a decrease in the side effects. For this, immunomodulatory peptides with action similar to IL-10 and TGF-β1, may be a good alternative for the development of new IT strategies. IL-10 and TGF-β1 are cytokines produced by different cell lines that play a key role in maintaining control of the immune response, and their action may be used to promote regulation of an inflammatory response. However, the purpose of this work was to isolate IL-10-like peptides and investigate their action in an inflammatory allergic environment and / or together with TGF-β1 mimetic peptides, already isolated in a previous work. Our results show that the Phage Display methodology applied for the selection of peptides is quite efficient, since we obtain peptides with different modulation capacity. With this, we propose the use of two peptides simultaneously, in the treatment of an allergic response, promoting a specific allergen regulatory response, which would decrease the side effects currently found in most of the treatments used.