IL-9 Induces VEGF Secretion from Human Mast Cells and IL-9/IL-9 Receptor Genes Are Overexpressed in Atopic Dermatitis

Interleukin 9 (IL-9) has been implicated in mast cell-related inflammatory diseases, such as asthma, where vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is involved. Here we report that IL-9 (10–20 ng/ml) induces gene expression and secretion of VEGF from human LAD2. IL-9 does not induce mast cell degranulation or the release of other mediators (IL-1, IL-8, or TNF). VEGF production in response to IL-9 involves STAT-3 activation. The effect is inhibited (about 80%) by the STAT-3 inhibitor, Stattic. Gene-expression of IL-9 and IL-9 receptor is significantly increased in lesional skin areas of atopic dermatitis (AD) patients as compared to normal control skin, while serum IL-9 is not different from controls. These results imply that functional interactions between IL-9 and mast cells leading to VEGF release contribute to the initiation/propagation of the pathogenesis of AD, a skin inflammatory disease

Minimal information for studies of extracellular vesicles 2018 (MISEV2018):a position statement of the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles and update of the MISEV2014 guidelines

The last decade has seen a sharp increase in the number of scientific publications describing physiological and pathological functions of extracellular vesicles (EVs), a collective term covering various subtypes of cell-released, membranous structures, called exosomes, microvesicles, microparticles, ectosomes, oncosomes, apoptotic bodies, and many other names. However, specific issues arise when working with these entities, whose size and amount often make them difficult to obtain as relatively pure preparations, and to characterize properly. The International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) proposed Minimal Information for Studies of Extracellular Vesicles (“MISEV”) guidelines for the field in 2014. We now update these “MISEV2014” guidelines based on evolution of the collective knowledge in the last four years. An important point to consider is that ascribing a specific function to EVs in general, or to subtypes of EVs, requires reporting of specific information beyond mere description of function in a crude, potentially contaminated, and heterogeneous preparation. For example, claims that exosomes are endowed with exquisite and specific activities remain difficult to support experimentally, given our still limited knowledge of their specific molecular machineries of biogenesis and release, as compared with other biophysically similar EVs. The MISEV2018 guidelines include tables and outlines of suggested protocols and steps to follow to document specific EV-associated functional activities. Finally, a checklist is provided with summaries of key points

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

The p38-Mediated Rapid Down-Regulation of Cell Surface gp130 Expression Impairs Interleukin-6 Signaling in the Synovial Fluid of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis Patients

Objective. Interleukin-6 (IL-6) signaling plays an important proinflammatory role, but this role is restricted by regulatory mechanisms that, for example, reduce the cell surface availability of the signaltransducing chain of the IL-6 receptor, gp130. The aim of this study was to determine whether the inflammatory environment in arthritic joints has an impact on monocytic gp130 surface expression and the extent to which regulatory processes in the synovial fluid (SF) can be reproduced in an in vitro model. Methods. Flow cytometry and live cell imaging were used to measure the cell surface expression and internalization of gp130. STAT-3 phosphorylation was monitored by flow cytometry and Western blotting. Results. In patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), levels of cell surface gp130 expression in SF monocytes were reduced compared to those in peripheral blood (PB) monocytes. These reduced levels were reproduced when PB monocytes from healthy donors were stim ulated with SF, and this reduction was dependent on p38 MAPK. The induction of p38 by IL-1 in PB monocytes interfered with IL-6 signaling due to the reduced cell surface expression of gp130. Conclusion. These results suggest that p38- mediated proinflammatory stimuli induce the downregulation of gp130 on monocytes and thus restrict gp130-mediated signal transduction. This regulatory mechanism could be of relevance to processes in the inflamed joints of patients with JIA