ANTI-INFLAMMATORY ROLE OF GAL-8 IN TRYPANOSOMA CRUZI CHRONIC INFECTION

BERTELLI, ADRIANO; BECCARIA, C; PASCUALE, C; LEGUIZAMÓN, M. SUSANA

Congreso; 3rd Argentinian Symposium on Glycobiology ? GlycoAR 2019; 2019

Chagas disease, caused by the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, is a chronic disabling disease. It is estimated about 8-10 million infectedpatients, 40,000 new cases/year, in Central and South America, and 300,000 cases in the USA due to migration. Chagas disease(cardiomyopathy and megaviscera) represents a major health, social and economic problem in Latin America with approximately 50,000fatalities per year due to chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy (CCC). CCC development is based on the induction, by parasite persistence,of a strong inflammation response and severe myocardial fibrosis replacing damaged tissue. This remodeling leads to a markedhyperthrophy and cardiac failure. The occurrence of myocarditis is correlated with clinical severity (30%), and asymptomatics patients(70%) show minimal inflammation. T. cruzi population T. cruzi population is organized in six Discrete Typing Units (DTU), TCI I- VI,which display high biological diversity (invasion, differentiation, replication, cellular tropism, etc).Galectins are lectins with affinity to beta-galactosides involved in multiple biological activities. The best-characterized functions ofgalectins are performed extracellularly, where they bind glycans to modulate cellular behaviors. Galectin-8 (Gal-8) is included in thetandem repeat group. It has been involved in cellular adhesion, migration, apoptosis, etc., is widely distributed in different tissues andcan works through an autocrine/paracrine way. In addition, different authors have proposed Gal-8 to be involved either in proinflammatoryor anti-inflammatory events.The aim of our work was to analyze the role of Gal-8 in an inflammatory context induced by pathogens. Our model is a chronic murineinfection induced by T. cruzi in B6Gal-8 knock out (Gal-8KO) and its counterpart C57BL/6J (WT) male mice. Previously, we havereported that in hearth of infected Gal-8KO mice the inflammation score, the fibrosis and the frequency of macrophages and neutrophilswere significantly higher than in infected WT mice. In this work we analyze the different spleen cell populations, focused on the analysisof T regulatory cells, cytokine production and lymphocytes proliferations.