Toll-like receptor 5 engagement induces interleukin-17C expression in intestinal epithelial cells

The family of interleukin-17 (IL-17) cytokine is the essential inflammatory mediator that influences the pathophysiology of various inflammatory diseases. Many studies focused on investigating the expression, signaling, and biological impacts of IL-17A and IL-17F, and the neutralization of these cytokines exhibited some promising results in clinical trials. In contrast, the expression resources and physiological relevance of IL-17C remained to be studied. In this study, through a microarray approach conducted with nontransformed human colonic epithelial cells (NCM460), we found that bacterial flagellin stimulation elicited potent IL-17C mRNA expression. We also confirmed that IL-17C protein production was strongly induced by flagellin in these cells. Flagellin-induced IL-17C expression was also observed in human colon adenocarcinoma cells such as DLD-1 and HT-29, indicating that IL-17C could be a signature inflammatory cytokine from intestinal epithelial cells in response to flagellin. Since inhibited in TLR5-, or MyD88- or TRIF-silenced cells, flagellin-induced IL-17C expression was specifically mediated by TLR5 and, subsequently, MyD88 and TRIF adaptor molecules. Furthermore, in line with inflammatory nature of IL-17, we found that IL-17C expression was substantially enhanced in the intestinal tissues from Ulcerative colitis patients. Given the facts that TLR5 is a key pattern recognition receptor which mediates microbial recognition in the intestinal epithelium and IL-17C turned out to be a unique member of the IL-17 family expressed in intestinal epithelial cells on TLR5 activation, our study may provide an important clue on understanding how intestinal microbes would contribute to an inflammatory program in the gut.