Trm cells
Creative Minds: Taking Aim at Adverse Drug Reactions
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Sherrie Divito
As a practicing dermatologist, Sherrie Divito sees lots of patients each week at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston. She also sees lots of research opportunities. One that grabbed her attention is graft-versus-host disease (GvHD), which can arise after a bone-marrow transplant for leukemia, lymphoma, or various other diseases. What happens is immune cells in the donated marrow recognize a transplant patient’s body as “foreign” and launch an attack. Skin is often attacked first, producing a severe rash that is a harbinger of complications to come in other parts of the body.
But Divito saw something else: it’s virtually impossible to distinguish between an acute GvHD-caused rash and a severe skin reaction to drugs, from amoxicillin to carbamazepine. In her GvHD studies, Divito had been researching a recently identified class of immune cell called tissue-resident memory T (Trm) cells. They remain in skin rather than circulating in the bloodstream. The clinical similarities made Divito wonder whether Trm cells may also help to drive severe skin allergies to drugs.
Divito has received a 2016 NIH Director’s Early Independence Award to find out. If correct, Divito will help not only to improve the lives of thousands of people with GvHD, but potentially benefit the millions of other folks who experience adverse reactions to drug.
