Meyiah Abdo, Al-Harrasi Ahmed, Ur Rehman Najeeb, Elkord Eyad
Department of Biosciences and Bioinformatics & Suzhou Municipal Key Lab of Biomedical Sciences and Translational Immunology, School of Science, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China.
Natural and Medical Sciences Research Center, University of Nizwa, Nizwa 616, Oman.
Fitoterapia. 2025 Mar;181:106401. doi: 10.1016/j.fitote.2025.106401. Epub 2025 Feb 3.
Boswellic acids (BAs) have been documented as anti-inflammatory agents with the potential to regulate immune responses. However, their impacts on the expression level of immune checkpoint (IC) molecules in T cells have never been reported. By using flow cytometric assays, we investigated whether BAs extracted from Boswellia sacra (B. sacra) have any potential effects on the expression of PD-1 and TIGIT immune checkpoints (ICs) on activated T cells in vitro. Interestingly β-BA at a concentration of 50 μM significantly reduced the expression of PD-1 and TIGIT on both activated CD4 and CD8 T cells without any cytotoxicity. Additionally, β-KBA significantly reduced the percentages of CD4PD-1 and CD8TIGIT T cells at 50 μM concentration. Furthermore, a significant reduction in CD4PD-1 T cells was observed following treatment with a lower concentration (25 μM) of β-AKBA. These findings show that BA compounds have the ability to reduce the expression of PD-1 and TIGIT in stimulated human T cells, which might play critical roles in reinvigorating exhausted T cells, indicating their potentials in immunosuppressed disease settings such as cancers and infections. This study is the first to investigate the effects of these compounds on the expression of immune checkpoints in human T cells. Clearly, further investigations are required to assess the mechanism of action of these compounds on ICs, and their efficacy as therapeutic agents in different diseases.
乳香酸（BAs）已被证明是具有调节免疫反应潜力的抗炎剂。然而，它们对T细胞中免疫检查点（IC）分子表达水平的影响尚未见报道。通过流式细胞术检测，我们研究了从神圣乳香（B. sacra）中提取的BAs对体外活化T细胞上PD-1和TIGIT免疫检查点（ICs）表达是否有任何潜在影响。有趣的是，浓度为50 μM的β-乳香酸显著降低了活化的CD4和CD8 T细胞上PD-1和TIGIT的表达，且无任何细胞毒性。此外，β-酮基乳香酸在50 μM浓度时显著降低了CD4PD-1和CD8TIGIT T细胞的百分比。此外，用较低浓度（25 μM）的β-乙酰基乳香酸处理后，观察到CD4PD-1 T细胞显著减少。这些发现表明，BA化合物有能力降低刺激的人T细胞中PD-1和TIGIT的表达，这可能在重振耗竭的T细胞中起关键作用，表明它们在癌症和感染等免疫抑制疾病环境中的潜力。本研究首次调查了这些化合物对人T细胞中免疫检查点表达的影响。显然，需要进一步研究来评估这些化合物对ICs的作用机制，以及它们作为不同疾病治疗剂的疗效。
