{"doi":"10.17615/zyep-hh06","title":"Dihydroartemisinin ameliorates inflammatory disease by its reciprocal effects on Th and Treg cell function via modulating mTOR pathway","abstract":"Dihydroartemisinin (DHA) is an important derivative of an herb medicine Artemisia annua L., used in ancient China. DHA is currently used world-wide to treat malaria by killing malaria-causing parasites. In addition to this prominent effect, DHA is suggested to regulate cellular functions, such as angiogenesis, tumor cell growth and immunity. Nonetheless, how DHA affects T cell function remains poorly understood. We found that DHA potently suppressed Th cell differentiation in vitro. Unexpectedly however, DHA greatly promoted Treg cell generation, in a manner dependent on TGF-βR:Smad signal. In addition, DHA treatment effectively reduced EAE onset and ameliorated ongoing EAE in mice. Administration of DHA significantly decreased Th but increased Treg cells in EAE-inflicted mice without apparent global immune suppression. Moreover, DHA modulated mTOR pathway, because mTOR signal was attenuated in T cells upon DHA treatment. Importantly, enhanced Akt activity neutralized DHA-mediated effects on T cells in an mTOR dependent fashion. This study therefore reveals a novel immune regulatory function of DHA to reciprocally regulate Th and Treg cell generation through modulating mTOR pathway. It addresses how DHA regulates immune function and suggests a new type of drug for treating diseases where mTOR activity to be tempered.","journal":"UNC Libraries","year":2020,"id":144643,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9527,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":255663,"name":"Yisong Y. Wan","orcid":"0000-0003-4346-9717","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":533150,"name":"Yan Zhao","orcid":"0000-0002-4588-6752","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":544112,"name":"Albert S. Baldwin","orcid":"0000-0003-1246-1333","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":404627,"name":"Yunqi Wang","orcid":"0000-0001-7980-6450","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255657,"name":"Zengli Guo","orcid":"0000-0003-2950-4790","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":613755,"name":"Weidong Hao","orcid":"0000-0001-9961-4923","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":613942,"name":"Ai Di Gu","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":596908,"name":"Han C. Dan","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:17:48.191325Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}