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Multicellular Human Alveolar Model Composed of Epithelial Cells and Primary Immune Cells for Hazard Assessment
Published on: May 6, 2020
Lung epithelial cells modulate the inflammatory response of alveolar macrophages
Vardit Rubovitch1, Shoham Gershnabel, Moshe Kalina
1Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel. rubovitc@post.tau.ac.il
Abstract:
The goal of this study was to examine the effect of alveolar epithelial cells on inflammatory responses in macrophages. Lung epithelial cells (either rat RLE-6TN or human A549 cells) reduced LPS-induced NO production in alveolar macrophages (AM) in a contact-independent mechanism. The inhibitory effect of the epithelial cells was present already at the transcriptional level: LPS-induced inducible NO synthase (iNOS) expression was significantly smaller. Surfactant protein A (SP-A)-induced NO production by alveolar macrophages was also reduced in the presence of A549 cells, though, by a different kinetics. LPS-induced interleukin-6 (IL-6) production (another inflammatory pathway) by alveolar macrophages was also reduced in the presence of RLE-6TN cells. These data suggest a role for lung epithelial cells in the complicated modulation of inflammatory processes, and provide an insight into the mechanism underlying.
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