Human peripheral eosinophils express functional interferon-gamma receptors (IFN-gammaR)

In order to determine whether or not IFN-gammaR is associated with regulatory mechanisms on human eosinophil function, we examined the expression of functional IFN-gammaR on human peripheral eosinophils. In this study, peripheral blood eosinophils were obtained from seven normal controls and 12 patients (bronchial asthma, n = 9, and hypereosinophilic syndrome (HES), n = 3), and the purity of eosinophils was 97.11 +/- 2.31%, n = 19. We first showed that anti-IFN-gammaR alpha-chain MoAb reacted with all tested eosinophils of both normal controls and patients by flow cytometry analysis. We also showed expression of mRNA for the alpha-chain of IFN-gammaR in all purified eosinophils of six individuals. Further, to characterize IFN-gammaR on eosinophils, we did binding experiments with 125I-IFN-gamma on purified peripheral eosinophils. The linear Scatchard plot indicated a single type of high-affinity binding sites (dissociation constant (Kd) = 3.89-4.95 x 10(-10) M, numbers of binding sites = 183-233/cell, n = 3). To determine whether IFN-gammaR on eosinophils is functional, we examined surface eosinophilic cationic protein (ECP) and CD69 induction after IFN-gammaR ligation with recombinant human IFN-gamma (rhIFN-gamma) on eosinophils by flow cytometry. rhIFN-gamma stimulation significantly induced both ECP and CD69 expression on the 2-18 h-cultured eosinophils in a dose-dependent manner. Further, the effects of rhIFN-gamma stimulation were significantly blocked by both a neutralizing anti-IFN-gamma MoAb and a blocking anti-IFN-gammaR MoAb. These results suggest that human peripheral eosinophils express functional IFN-gammaR.