Functional attributes of blood MAIT cells in coronary artery disease patients

Aim. To investigate in-vitro functional characteristics of blood circulating mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells from coronary artery disease patients (CAD) and normal controls.

Objectives. We will recruit additional 30 CAD patients and 30 normal controls (all above 18 years old) in this study at the department of cardiothoracic surgery in the medical faculty of Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany. The inclusion and exclusion criterias, blood drawing procedures, and the amount of the blood to be drawn from a CAD patients or controls will be same as mentioned in the approved study (170/20). In this study, we intend to isolate peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and/or MAIT cells from heparinized blood obtained from CAD patients and controls, which will be further investigated for (i) proliferation capacity; (ii) granzyme production; (iii) cell expression of exhaustion molecules (like PD-1, CTLA-4, TIM families etc); (iv) MAIT cell-associated cytokines production (like IL-17A, IL-17F and IL-22 etc); (v) activation of intracellular signaling molecules (like, pSTAT-1, pSTAT-2, IRF-9, MyD88, IRAK-1/4, and TRAF-6 etc) and also other conventional pathway molecules (like NF-kB and MAPK-related elements etc). This is achieved by stimulating the MAIT cells or PBMCs (containing MAIT cells) with cytokines, such as IL-7, IL-18, IL-12 and IFN-α2, as these cytokines are pivotal for MAIT cell activation, especially during viral infections