Sulfatide-targeting natural killer T cell activation for cardiac arrest-associated neurological injury

Increasing the activity of natural killer T cells with TCR specificity for the CD1D-presented antigen sulfatide, a sphingolipid highly concentrated in neuronal myelin sheaths, could help treat neurological injury following cardiac arrest by reducing cytokine-driven myeloid cell recruitment to the brain, thus decreasing neurological dysfunction.

Numbers of natural killer T cells with a diverse repertoire of sulfatide-specific TCRs were higher in peripheral blood mononuclear cell samples from cardiac arrest patients with good neurological outcomes than in samples from healthy individuals or cardiac arrest patients with poor neurological outcomes. ...