Gomesin acts in the immune system and promotes myeloid differentiation and monocyte/macrophage activation in mouse

Due to the cytotoxic effect of antimicrobial peptides (AMP) against several microorganism and tumor cells has been proposed their association with the immune system. However, just a few reports have shown this relationship. In this study, mice were treated with gomesin, a β-hairpin AMP that exhibit high cytotoxicity against bacterial and tumor cells. Different effects in the immune system were observed, such as, decrease of CD3⁺ in T lymphocytes (Control: 17.7±1.4%; Gomesin: 7.67±1.2%) and in hematopoietic progenitors and increase of hematopoietic stem cell (Control: 0.046±0.004%; Gomesin: 0.067±0.003%), B220⁺ B lymphocytes (Control: 38.63±1.5%; Gomesin: 47.83±0.48%), and Mac-1⁺F4/80⁺ macrophages (Control: 11.76±3.4%; Gomesin: 27.13±4.0%). Additionally, macrophage increase was accompanied by an increase of macrophage phagocytosis (Control 20.85±1.53; Gomesin 31.32±1 Geometric mean), interleukin 6 (Control: 47.24±1.9ng/mL; Gomesin: 138.68±33.68ng/mL) and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (Control: 0.872±0.093ng/mL; Gomesin: 1.83±0.067ng/mL). Thus, this report showed immunomodulatory activity of gomesin in the immune system of mice.