University of Toledo Receives NIH Funds for Fungal Infection Research

A University of Toledo immunologist has received a federal grant to study how a type of cell unexpectedly discovered in the oral cavity helps the body fight off fungal infections. The cells, called megakaryocytes, are predominantly present in bone marrow where they produce blood platelets crucial for blood clotting.

Recent research led by Heather Conti, PhD, an associate professor in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, found those cells also were present in the tongue, and they seem to play a key role in the immune response to a common but potentially dangerous fungal infection. “Others have shown megakaryocytes in the lungs, but no one had previously described them in the oral mucosa,” Dr. Conti said. “We were seeing that they respond to the fungal infection. They expand and they make things that are involved in clearing that infection. They appear to have an important role.”

Those findings, published last year in the journal Mucosal Immunology, form the basis of Dr. Conti’s new project, which received a three-year $473,632 grant from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research earlier this spring.

Dr. Conti’s NIH-funded project is specifically focused on studying how oral megakaryocytes interact with Candida and with a cytokine called interleuken-17. Though interleuken-17 is beneficial in the context of clearing fungal infections, it also is believed to play a major role in the development of several autoimmune diseases. As such, it and similar cytokines are increasingly being targeted with next-generation inhibitors to alleviate the symptoms of autoimmune disorders such as psoriasis.

With autoimmune disorders on the rise — and some species of Candida showing resistance to current antifungal medications — decoding the body’s immune response against fungal infections is increasingly important. “Any time we better understand the immune response against the fungus and how we can take advantage of that, it means less antifungal usage,” Dr. Conti said. “Those medications are toxic, and infections don’t always respond.”

While focused specifically on oral fungal infections, Dr. Conti’s research has the potential to unlock more secrets about the immune system in general. “This adds to our knowledge of what interleuken-17 is doing in the body,” she said. “This is a new cell that interleukin-17 talks to, and we’ll be able to understand better what that means not just in the oral cavity, but throughout the body as well.”