Macrophage as the Game Changer of the (Future) Therapeutic Paradigm

Abstract

Macrophages, the executioner of phagosome maturation, are central to coordinate and cooperate as the bridge between innate and acquired immunity. Mice primed with attenuated Leishmania promastigote showed host defense, such as total protection against LPS-induced endotoxic shock and, diarrhoeagenic E. coli lethal infection. Cell-based empirical preparations and isolated lipids, sphingolipids and lipoproteins were made out of the promastigotes. Host macrophage-mediated enhancement of microbicidal actions, non-specific and specific host immunity boosting and mitigation of antomicrobial resistance by the empirical preparations and, the cancer cell apoptosis, resolution of sepsis, combating autoimmune disease by isolated chemical constituents were evident, respectively. Macrophage phagosome maturation is the key factor of all these changes and indeed the attenuated Leishmania promastigote was found as an efficient agent for such maturation. To assess clinical impact of the studies, the therapeutic aspects of isolated total promastigote lipid were investigated on the synovial fluid mononuclear cells of RA (rheumatoid arthritis) patient as a case study including an animal model of the disease in parallel. The use of the attenuated Leishmania promastigote to produce human therapeutic vaccines that served Indian people for decades (1954–2005) by a nearly unknown Kolkata (India) based firm (IBL) was rediscovered recently.