Professor Paul Moynagh, Director of the Institute of Immunology at NUI Maynooth, and his team has discovered the critical function of a gene, 'Pellino3', in regulating the amount of protective proteins called 'interferons' produced in response to a virus. The function of Pellino3 in the body had previously been undetermined.

When infected by a virus, our immune system senses the threat and responds by producing protective proteins, interferons, which prevent the spread of the virus and ultimately help eliminate the virus.

The body also produces Pellino3, a gene which the NUI Maynooth team has discovered acts as a braking system to prevent overproduction of interferons. The overproduction of interferons can lead to debilitating inflammatory diseases such as Lupus, while under production of interferons can lead to diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis and hepatitis. Hence control over the amount of interferons produced by the body is critical in the treatment of viral disease.

While in some cases it is not yet known whether specific viruses cause specific diseases, regulating the production of interferons offers a means of controlling these outcomes.

More information is available from the press release on the NUI website. The research paper itself is available from Nature Immunology at the second link below. The third link is an Irish Times article on the discovery.

The research was part-funded by the HRB PhD Scholars Programme.