Possible anti-inflammatory mechanisms of Calcitriol in cells exposed to LPS

MARTINELLI, R.; DAURELIO, L.D.; ESTEBAN, L.

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 4th ISCB-LA Conference and the 7th Argentinian Congress of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (CAB2C); 2016

Asociación Argentina de Bioinformática y Biología Computacional (A2B2C)

Short Abstract: Background: The cellular arm of the innate immune response, consisting of mononuclear phagocytes and dendritic cells, plays an important role by initiating, directing and modulating different aspects of the adaptive immune response. These cells, despite their phenotypic diversity, share essential functions to the development of the immune response. Results: We work with data from cells exposed to lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a glycolipidic macromolecule present on the wall of Gram negative bacteria. This model allows us to make inferences about different kinds of diseases in which inflammation plays an essential role. In this work, data from DNA microarray experiments of monocytes, macrophages and dendritic cells exposed to LPS was analyzed. Using clustering techniques and functional enrichment analysis we identify a group of overexpressed genes in the three cell types, some of them can modulate the inflammation through the inhibition of NFkB pathway and that also can be regulated by calcitriol. Conclusions: This allowed us to construct a gene regulatory network model that can help to understand the vitamin D antiinflammatory action, one of the non-classical actions of this compound. This also opens the search for molecules that can act as therapeutic targets for a variety of diseases in which inflammation plays an important role in their pathogenesis.