Tribbles protein offers hope for tuberculosis treatment

Tuberculosis is the biggest bacterial killer worldwide. 1.5 million people die from TB each year due, in part, to a rise in antibiotic resistant strains, some of which are untreatable with antibiotics.

Antibiotic-resistant strains of the bacteria means that there’s an urgent need to find other ways of treating the disease. Instead of targeting the bacteria with antibiotics to combat the disease, researchers at the University of Sheffield’s Bateson Centre are focusing on how our immune systems could overcome infection.

In a recently published paper in eLife, Dr. Philip Elks and Professor Endre Kiss-Toth, both in the School of Medicine and Population Health, have investigated the role of a protein family called Tribbles in the immune response to TB.

Using a human tuberculosis skin test model that caused a localized immune response with collaborators in UCL, it was found that one member of the Tribbles protein family—Tribbles1—was regulated by infection challenge. Using zebrafish larval models of tuberculosis, they found that if Tribbles 1 levels were increased during infection, it protected the host against tuberculosis.

This suggests that regulating the Tribbles 1 protein could favorably influence the immune response and have a significant effect on the treatment of tuberculosis.

“While Tribbles proteins have been linked to immunity for some time, their roles in bacterial infections such as tuberculosis have not previously been demonstrated. Our study uncovers an important role for Tribbles 1 in our immune defense against pathogens, opening the door for further studies investigating targeting these proteins with drugs as a new way of treating antibiotic resistant infections,” says Dr. Philip Elks, Senior Research Fellow, School of Medicine and Population Health