By Sunderarajan Padmanabhan
New Delhi: The immune system in the body has an important component called the `complement system’. This is involved in immune surveillance. It is important that it is regulated properly. Otherwise, it can damage the cells of the host’s body itself. This problem is linked to several diseases, including Alzheimer’s, stroke, age-related macular degeneration, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, and cancer.
A series of protein molecules present on the surface of cells in the body tightly regulate the activation of the system. These proteins primarily belong to a family called the `regulators of complement activation’ (RCA) family. The members of the family work to prevent damage to cells of the host by its own complement system through two mechanisms called decay-accelerating activity (DAA) and cofactor activity (CFA).
Understanding the nuts and bolts of how the two mechanisms operate could help gain useful insights into what goes wrong in diseases linked to inappropriate regulation of the complement system, and could consequently help design improved strategies for therapeutic interventions.
