Regulation of inflammation and protection against invasive pneumococcal infection by the long pentraxin PTX3
Abstract
Streptococcus pneumoniae is a major pathogen in children, elderly subjects and immunodeficient patients. PTX3 is a fluid phase pattern recognition molecule (PRM) involved in resistance to selected microbial agents and in regulation of inflammation. The present study was designed to assess the role of PTX3 in invasive pneumococcal infection. In a murine model of invasive pneumococcal infection, PTX3 was strongly induced in non-hematopoietic (particularly, endothelial) cells. The IL-1β/MyD88 axis played a major role in regulation of the Ptx3 gene expression. Ptx3-/- mice presented more severe invasive pneumococcal infection. Although high concentrations of PTX3 had opsonic activity in vitro, no evidence of PTX3-enhanced phagocytosis was obtained in vivo. In contrast, Ptx3-deficient mice showed enhanced recruitment of neutrophils and inflammation. Using P-selectin deficient mice, we found that protection against pneumococcus was dependent upon PTX3-mediated regulation of neutrophil inflammation. In humans, PTX3 genetic polymorphisms were associated with invasive pneumococcal infections. Thus, this fluid phase PRM plays an important role in tuning inflammation and resistance against invasive pneumococcal infection.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting file. Source Data files have been provided for Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 and supplementary figures.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Fondazione Cariplo (Contract n{degree sign} 2015-0564)
- Rémi Porte
Fondazione AIRC per la ricerca sul cancro ETS (grant IG-2019 Contract n{degree sign} 23465 and 5x1000 Contract n{degree sign} 21147)
- Rémi Porte
HORIZON EUROPE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA-ESA-ITN,grant number 676129)
- Alberto Mantovani
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (PD/BD/114138/2016)
- Rita Silva-Gomes
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Evangelos J Giamarellos-Bourboulis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, Greece
Ethics
Animal experimentation: Procedures involving animals handling and care were conformed to protocols approved by the Humanitas Clinical and Research Center (Rozzano, Milan, Italy) in compliance with national (4D.L. N.116, G.U., suppl. 40, 18-2-1992 and N. 26, G.U. march 4, 2014) and international law and policies (European Economic Community Council Directive 2010/63/EU, OJ L 276/33, 22.09.2010; National Institutes of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, U.S. National Research Council, 2011). All efforts were made to minimize the number of animals used and their suffering. The study was approved by the Italian Ministry of Health (742/2016-PR).
Human subjects: DNA was obtained from 57 pediatric patients with invasive pulmonary disease (IPD) and 521 age- and sex-matched healthy controls from the cohort described by Garcia-Laorden and collaborators (García-Laorden et al., 2020). DNA samples were provided by Carlos Rodriguez-Gallego, Ignacio Obando and Elena Colino .
Version history
- Received: March 13, 2022
- Preprint posted: April 15, 2022 (view preprint)
- Accepted: May 23, 2023
- Accepted Manuscript published: May 24, 2023 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: June 14, 2023 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2023, Porte et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 631
- views
-
- 114
- downloads
-
- 4
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Cancer Biology
- Immunology and Inflammation
Pyrimidine nucleotide biosynthesis is a druggable metabolic dependency of cancer cells, and chemotherapy agents targeting pyrimidine metabolism are the backbone of treatment for many cancers. Dihydroorotate dehydrogenase (DHODH) is an essential enzyme in the de novo pyrimidine biosynthesis pathway that can be targeted by clinically approved inhibitors. However, despite robust preclinical anticancer efficacy, DHODH inhibitors have shown limited single-agent activity in phase 1 and 2 clinical trials. Therefore, novel combination therapy strategies are necessary to realize the potential of these drugs. To search for therapeutic vulnerabilities induced by DHODH inhibition, we examined gene expression changes in cancer cells treated with the potent and selective DHODH inhibitor brequinar (BQ). This revealed that BQ treatment causes upregulation of antigen presentation pathway genes and cell surface MHC class I expression. Mechanistic studies showed that this effect is (1) strictly dependent on pyrimidine nucleotide depletion, (2) independent of canonical antigen presentation pathway transcriptional regulators, and (3) mediated by RNA polymerase II elongation control by positive transcription elongation factor B (P-TEFb). Furthermore, BQ showed impressive single-agent efficacy in the immunocompetent B16F10 melanoma model, and combination treatment with BQ and dual immune checkpoint blockade (anti-CTLA-4 plus anti-PD-1) significantly prolonged mouse survival compared to either therapy alone. Our results have important implications for the clinical development of DHODH inhibitors and provide a rationale for combination therapy with BQ and immune checkpoint blockade.
-
- Immunology and Inflammation
We studied lysosomal Ca2+ in inflammasome. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) + palmitic acid (PA) decreased lysosomal Ca2+ ([Ca2+]Lys) and increased [Ca2+]i through mitochondrial ROS, which was suppressed in Trpm2-KO macrophages. Inflammasome activation and metabolic inflammation in adipose tissue of high-fat diet (HFD)-fed mice were ameliorated by Trpm2 KO. ER→lysosome Ca2+ refilling occurred after lysosomal Ca2+ release whose blockade attenuated LPS + PA-induced inflammasome. Subsequently, store-operated Ca2+entry (SOCE) was activated whose inhibition suppressed inflammasome. SOCE was coupled with K+ efflux whose inhibition reduced ER Ca2+ content ([Ca2+]ER) and impaired [Ca2+]Lys recovery. LPS + PA activated KCa3.1 channel, a Ca2+-activated K+ channel. Inhibitors of KCa3.1 channel or Kcnn4 KO reduced [Ca2+]ER, attenuated increase of [Ca2+]i or inflammasome activation by LPS + PA, and ameliorated HFD-induced inflammasome or metabolic inflammation. Lysosomal Ca2+ release induced delayed JNK and ASC phosphorylation through CAMKII-ASK1. These results suggest a novel role of lysosomal Ca2+ release sustained by ER→lysosome Ca2+ refilling and K+ efflux through KCa3.1 channel in inflammasome activation and metabolic inflammation.