The tymus: Neuroendocrine axis: phisiology, molecular biology and therapeutic potential of the thymic peptide tymuline

REGGIANI P; MOREL G; CONSOLE G; BARBEITO C; RODRIGUEZ S; BROWN O; BELLINI M; PLEAU JM; DARDENNE M; GOYA R

ANNALS OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.

Scholar one

Lugar: New York; Año: 2009 vol. 1153 p. 98 - 106

0077-8923

Thymulin is a thymic hormone exclusively produced by the thymic epithelial cells. It consists of a nonapeptide component coupled to the ion zinc, which confers biological activity to the molecule. After its discovery in the early ‘70, thymulin was characterized as a thymic hormone involved in several aspects of intra- and extrathymic T-cell differentiation. Subsequently, it was demonstrated that thymulin production and secretion is strongly influenced by the neuroendocrine system. Conversely, a growing core of information, to be reviewed here, points to thymulin as a hypophysotropic peptide. In recent years, interest has arisen in the potential use of thymulin as a therapeutic agent. Thymulin was shown to possess anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties in the brain. Furthermore, an adenoviral vector harboring a synthetic gene for thymulin, stereotaxically injected in the rat brain, achieved a much longer expression than the adenovirally-mediated expression in the brain of other genes, thus suggesting that an anti-inflammatory activity of thymulin prevents the immune system from destroying virus-transduced brain cells. Other studies suggest that thymulin gene therapy may also be a suitable therapeutic strategy to prevent some of the endocrine and metabolic alterations that typically appear in thymus-deficient animal models. The present article briefly reviews the literature on the physiology, molecular biology and therapeutic potential of thymulin.