FEBS Press Awards

The prize was awarded for the below outstanding paper published by the Klinke lab (Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering and WVU Cancer Institute, West Virginia University, USA) in The FEBS Journal in 2018. The monetary part of the award will be shared between joint first authors of the paper – Cassidy L. Bland and Christina N. Byrne-Hoffman – and senior author David J. Klinke II will be congratulated on the prize and present a plenary lecture about this work at the 44th FEBS Congress in Krakow, Poland in July 2019. 
 

Exosomes derived from B16F0 melanoma cells alter the transcriptome of cytotoxic T cells that impacts mitochondrial respiration

Cassidy L. Bland, Christina N. Byrne‐Hoffman, Audry Fernandez, Stephanie L. Rellick, Wentao Deng and David J. Klinke II
 

Exosomes are emerging as important messengers for heterotypic cell communication within the tumour microenvironment. To understand how tumour‐derived exosomes potentially affect immune cell function, Klinke and colleagues quantified how the coding and noncoding RNA payload within exosomes derived from B16F0 melanoma cells altered the transcriptome in recipient CTLL2 cytotoxic T cells. Their results suggested that the exosomal payload altered mitochondrial respiration, epigenetic regulation, and Notch signalling within cytotoxic T cells. However, exosomal miRNA did not downregulate target mRNA levels.

 

The FEBS Letters Award 2018 will be presented to David Stuart (University of Oxford, UK) for his outstanding paper:

Structure of glycosylated NPC1 luminal domain C reveals insights into NPC2 and Ebola virus interactions
Yuguang Zhao, Jingshan Ren, Karl Harlos and David I. Stuart

Niemann–Pick disease type C is a fatal, neurodegenerative lipid storage disorder resulting from loss of function mutations in genes NPC1 or NPC2. Interestingly, apart from its function in cholesterol transport NPC1 has been identified as a critical host entry site for filoviruses such as Ebola and Marburg.

In their paper Stuart and colleagues provide insights into both of these disease processes by determining the crystal structure of glycosylated NPC1 luminal domain C and finding all seven possible sites glycosylated. Furthermore, by mapping disease mutations to this glycosylated surface, they identify the potential binding surface for NPC2 and thus explain the development of the disease. Modelling the interaction between the NPC1 domain C and Ebola viral glycoprotein revealed four critical residues likely responsible for species-specific infection. This work provides key advances in our understanding of intracellular cholesterol trafficking as well as host–virus interaction in two fatal diseases.

The winning article is selected by a special Award Committee, formed by appointed members of the Editorial Board, plus one external member. The Award Committee members were: Laszlo Nagy (Orlando) Chair, Miguel De la Rosa (Seville), Maria Carmo-Fonseca (Lisbon), Claus Azzalin (Lisbon), and Daniela Ruffell (Editorial Office).

Prof. Stuart will present a plenary lecture about this work at the 43rd FEBS Congress in Prague, Czech Republic in July 2018, where he will be officially presented with the prize.

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For details on all FEBS awards, click here.