“Footprint of death” gives new clues about the spread of diseases

A previously unknown way for viruses to spread throughout the body has been discovered, paving the way for the development of effective medicines.

A new way of spreading disease has just been discovered at La Trobe University and reveals a new understanding of the process of cell death and renewal.

The authors of the published in Nature discovered that as cells self-destruct, they change shape, move away from the surrounding environment, and leave a residue nicknamed “death footprint”which contains a hitherto unknown type of extracellular vesicle (EV).

The new EVs, known as F-ApoEVs, they mark the location of a dead cell and serve as clues to help the immune system identify and clean up cell fragments, preventing unwanted inflammation.

“Understanding this basic biological process can open new avenues of research to develop treatments that use these steps and help the immune system to better fight diseases”, Professor Ivan Poon told .

“One billion cells are programmed to die every day as part of normal renewal and disease progression, and until now it was believed that the process of cell fragmentation during death was random and relatively simple”, he says.

“Our findings demonstrate the complexity of this process and highlight how each step is, in fact, essential to help the cell decompose efficiently and be eliminated by the immune system”, says Poon.

“We know that the body removes dead cell fragments to prevent them from lingering and causing inflammation or autoimmune diseases such as Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), and we have seen that F-ApoEVs are readily eliminated from the site of cell death,” said investigator Stephanie Rutter.

“What we didn’t expect was how viruses can also take advantage of this process and cause infection by hiding in F-ApoEVs”, he says.

Researchers hope the discovery could lead to creating more effective therapies for infectious and autoimmune diseases.

“The more we understand about cell death and what happens to cells after they die, the better we can understand disease pathologies and find new treatments,” concludes Rutter.