ZFP36L1 – A candidate risk gene for autoimmune disease
Research type
Research Study
Full title
ZFP36L1 – A candidate risk gene for autoimmune disease
IRAS ID
351893
Contact name
Georg Petkau
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Babraham Institute
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Our immune system helps protect us from getting sick and stops malignancies like cancer from growing. But sometimes, it doesn’t work right and can attack our own body, which causes autoimmune diseases. These diseases, like arthritis and diabetes, are hard to understand because many different immune cells play a part in causing them. We don’t always know what makes these diseases start, but things like infections, food, pollution, and genes can all be involved. Some changes in our genes are linked to these diseases.
We discovered that a protein called ZFP36L1 helps control two types of immune cells—effector T cells, which fight infections, and memory T cells, which help our body remember infections and protect us in the future. In mice, we found that having the right amount of ZFP36L1 is very important. Too much of it makes the effector immune system weak but helps the memory cells form well. Too little makes the immune system attack infected cells too quickly, but it doesn’t make memory cells and thus cant remember past infections.
We also found that some changes in the ZFP36L1 gene are connected to autoimmune diseases in people. This means what we learned from mice might help us understand human diseases, too.
Therefore, we want to study how much ZFP36L1 is in T cells from healthy people who have these gene changes. This can allow us to understand how their immune cells (T cells) will behave in the future.
We hope that learning more about ZFP36L1 can help us find better ways to diagnose or predict autoimmune diseases. It might also give us ideas for better treatments in the future.REC name
South Central - Oxford B Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
25/SC/0201
Date of REC Opinion
19 Jun 2025
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion