Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 24, 2026
A Simple and Efficient Method for Testing Immunomodulatory Agents for Generation of Tolerogenic Dendritic Cells from Human CD14+ Monocytes
Published on: April 11, 2025
Dexamethasone enhances LPS induction of tissue factor expression in human monocytic cells by increasing tissue factor
K Veera Reddy1, Gourab Bhattacharjee, Gernot Schabbauer
1Department of Immunology, The Scripps Research Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, CVN-18, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.
Abstract:
Glucocorticoids, such as dexamethasone (Dex), are used clinically in the treatment of various inflammatory diseases. Dex acts by inhibiting the expression of inflammatory mediators, such as tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1). It is surprising that Dex enhances bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) induction of tissue factor (TF) expression in human monocytic cells. TF is a transmembrane glycoprotein that activates the coagulation protease cascade. In this study, we analyze the mechanism by which Dex enhances LPS-induced TF expression in human monocytic cells. We found that Dex reduced LPS-induced TF gene transcription but increased the stability of TF mRNA. Dex decreased the stability of MCP-1 mRNA and did not affect TNF-alpha mRNA stability. Finally, we showed that Dex increased the stability of a transcript consisting of the final 297 nucleotides of the TF mRNA in in vitro decay assays. This region contains AU-rich elements that regulate mRNA stability and may mediate the Dex response. Therefore, despite an inhibition of TF gene transcription, Dex enhances TF expression in human monocytic cells by increasing the stability of TF mRNA.
