Keywords: Adenosine A2b signaling r CIITA r Epigenetics r MHC class II r Transcriptional regulation Additional supporting information may be found in the online version of this article at the publisher's web-site
IntroductionAntigen-restricted activation of T lymphocytes, which are designed to eliminate intracellular pathogens, plays a critical role in adapCorrespondence: Dr. Yong Xu e-mail: yxu2005@gmail.com tive immunity [1]. By their expression of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules, two groups of cells are specialized in presenting processed antigen to T cells: professional antigen presenting cells (p-APCs), which include B cells, dendritic cells, * These authors contributed equally to this work. . Efficient antigen presentation serves several critical pathobiological purposes. One of them is to combat the invasion of opportunistic microbes. Indeed, defective expression of MHC II molecules in fibroblast cells is associated with increased incidence of bacterial and viral infection [5]. Another example whereby the MHC II-dependent immune response plays a predominant role in host defense is the recognition and killing of cancer cells that express foreign epitopes. Mounting evidence has suggested that malignant cells employ a range of strategies to manipulate MHC II expression by fibroblast cells to facilitate evasion [6,7].Adenosine signaling is one of the biologically conserved pathways in mammals that regulates a range of life activities [8]. Recent investigations, however, reveal that adenosine signaling promotes carcinogenesis [9] and infectious diseases [10], indicating that it may target CIITA-mediated MHC II transactivation. Here, we report that adenosine signaling through the A2b receptor downregulates MHC II expression in lung fibroblast cells by repressing CIITA transcription via type III and IV promoters. Our data provide a novel rationale for the blockade of A2b adenosine signaling in the treatment of cancer and infectious disease.
Results
Adenosine signaling represses MHC II transcriptionWe have previously shown that MHC II expression is inducible by IFN-γ in lung fibroblast cells (IMR-90) in a CIITA-dependent manner [11]. To determine whether adenosine signaling could suppress MHC II expression, we treated IMR-90 cells with an adenosine receptor agonist adenosine-5 N-ethylcarboxamide (NECA). NECA downregulated the induction of HLA-DRα by IFN-γ at both mRNA (Fig. 1A) and protein (Fig. 1B) levels in a dose-response fashion. To examine whether the repression of MHC II expression by NECA took place at the transcription level, an HLA-DR-α promoter-reporter fusion construct was transfected into IMR-90 cells. As shown in Figure 1C, IFN-γ activated the promoter activity but NECA dampened the activation. Similar observations were made in primary mouse lung fibroblast cells (Supporting Information Fig. 1A and B). Therefore, activation of adenosine signaling in lung fibroblast cells is associated with attenuated MHC II transactivation by IFN-γ.
Adenosine signaling represses CIITA expression via ...