Antigen-driven colonic inflammation is associated with development of dysplasia in primary sclerosing cholangitis

© The Author(s). Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is an immune-mediated disease of the bile ducts that co-occurs with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in almost 90% of cases. Colorectal cancer is a major complication of patients with PSC and IBD, and these patients are at a much greater risk compared to patients with IBD without concomitant PSC. Combining flow cytometry, bulk and single-cell transcriptomics, and T and B cell receptor repertoire analysis of right colon tissue from 65 patients with PSC, 108 patients with IBD and 48 healthy individuals we identified a unique adaptive inflammatory transcriptional signature associated with greater risk and shorter time to dysplasia in patients with PSC. This inflammatory signature is characterized by antigen-driven interleukin-17A (IL-17A)+ forkhead box P3 (FOXP3)+ CD4 T cells that express a pathogenic IL-17 signature, as well as an expansion of IgG-secreting plasma cells. These results suggest that the mechanisms that drive the emergence of dysplasia in PSC and IBD are distinct and provide molecular insights that could guide prevention of colorectal cancer in individuals with PSC.This work was supported by the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable trust (SHARE), the Digestive Diseases Research Core Center C-IID P30 DK42086 at the University of Chicago, the PSC Partners Seeking a Cure Canada and the Sczholtz Family Foundation. K.R.M. is supported by grant no. NS124187. S.C.S. is supported by an American Gastroenterological Association Research Scholar Award, Veterans Affairs Career Development Award (no. ICX002027A01) and the San Diego Digestive Diseases Research Center (no. P30 DK120515). C.Q. is supported by the BBSRC Core Strategic Programme Grant (BB/CSP1720/1, BBS/E/T/000PR9818 and BBS/E/T/000PR9817). I.H.J. is supported by a Rosalind Franklin Fellowship from the University of Groningen and a Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research VIDI grant no. 016.171.047. D.G.S. is supported by grant no. F30DK121470.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Host Responses to Intestinal Microbial Antigens in Gluten-Sensitive Mice

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Excessive uptake of commensal bacterial antigens through a permeable intestinal barrier may influence host responses to specific antigen in a genetically predisposed host. The aim of this study was to investigate whether intestinal barrier dysfunction induced by indomethacin treatment affects the host response to intestinal microbiota in gluten-sensitized HLA-DQ8/HCD4 mice. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: HLA-DQ8/HCD4 mice were sensitized with gluten, and gavaged with indomethacin plus gluten. Intestinal permeability was assessed by Ussing chamber; epithelial cell (EC) ultra-structure by electron microscopy; RNA expression of genes coding for junctional proteins by Q-real-time PCR; immune response by in-vitro antigen-specific T-cell proliferation and cytokine analysis by cytometric bead array; intestinal microbiota by fluorescence in situ hybridization and analysis of systemic antibodies against intestinal microbiota by surface staining of live bacteria with serum followed by FACS analysis. Indomethacin led to a more pronounced increase in intestinal permeability in gluten-sensitized mice. These changes were accompanied by severe EC damage, decreased E-cadherin RNA level, elevated IFN-gamma in splenocyte culture supernatant, and production of significant IgM antibody against intestinal microbiota. CONCLUSION: Indomethacin potentiates barrier dysfunction and EC injury induced by gluten, affects systemic IFN-gamma production and the host response to intestinal microbiota antigens in HLA-DQ8/HCD4 mice. The results suggest that environmental factors that alter the intestinal barrier may predispose individuals to an increased susceptibility to gluten through a bystander immune activation to intestinal microbiota

Do Vascular Networks Branch Optimally or Randomly across Spatial Scales?

Modern models that derive allometric relationships between metabolic rate and body mass are based on the architectural design of the cardiovascular system and presume sibling vessels are symmetric in terms of radius, length, flow rate, and pressure. Here, we study the cardiovascular structure of the human head and torso and of a mouse lung based on three-dimensional images processed via our software Angicart. In contrast to modern allometric theories, we find systematic patterns of asymmetry in vascular branching, potentially explaining previously documented mismatches between predictions (power-law or concave curvature) and observed empirical data (convex curvature) for the allometric scaling of metabolic rate. To examine why these systematic asymmetries in vascular branching might arise, we construct a mathematical framework to derive predictions based on local, junction-level optimality principles that have been proposed to be favored in the course of natural selection and development. The two most commonly used principles are material-cost optimizations (construction materials or blood volume) and optimization of efficient flow via minimization of power loss. We show that material-cost optimization solutions match with distributions for asymmetric branching across the whole network but do not match well for individual junctions. Consequently, we also explore random branching that is constrained at scales that range from local (junction-level) to global (whole network). We find that material-cost optimizations are the strongest predictor of vascular branching in the human head and torso, whereas locally or intermediately constrained random branching is comparable to material-cost optimizations for the mouse lung. These differences could be attributable to developmentally-programmed local branching for larger vessels and constrained random branching for smaller vessels

Do Vascular Networks Branch Optimally or Randomly across Spatial Scales?

<div><p>Modern models that derive allometric relationships between metabolic rate and body mass are based on the architectural design of the cardiovascular system and presume sibling vessels are symmetric in terms of radius, length, flow rate, and pressure. Here, we study the cardiovascular structure of the human head and torso and of a mouse lung based on three-dimensional images processed via our software Angicart. In contrast to modern allometric theories, we find systematic patterns of asymmetry in vascular branching, potentially explaining previously documented mismatches between predictions (power-law or concave curvature) and observed empirical data (convex curvature) for the allometric scaling of metabolic rate. To examine why these systematic asymmetries in vascular branching might arise, we construct a mathematical framework to derive predictions based on local, junction-level optimality principles that have been proposed to be favored in the course of natural selection and development. The two most commonly used principles are material-cost optimizations (construction materials or blood volume) and optimization of efficient flow via minimization of power loss. We show that material-cost optimization solutions match with distributions for asymmetric branching across the whole network but do not match well for individual junctions. Consequently, we also explore random branching that is constrained at scales that range from local (junction-level) to global (whole network). We find that material-cost optimizations are the strongest predictor of vascular branching in the human head and torso, whereas locally or intermediately constrained random branching is comparable to material-cost optimizations for the mouse lung. These differences could be attributable to developmentally-programmed local branching for larger vessels and constrained random branching for smaller vessels.</p></div

Cardiovascular data and schematic illustration of vascular branching

<p><b>(a)</b> Mouse lung micro-CT images processed by Angicart. <b>(b)</b> Human head and torso MRI images processed by Angicart. <b>(c)</b> Schematic illustration of the asymmetric branching geometry and labeling. Parent vessel with radius <i>r</i>₀ and length <i>l</i>₀ branches into two daughter vessels with radius <i>r</i>_<i>i</i> and length <i>l</i>_<i>i</i> with subscript <i>i</i> = 1 or 2. Branching angles, <i>θ</i>_<i>i</i>, are defined by the angle between the sides defined by the endpoints of the vessel pairs. Here, subscripts are determined by the non-adjacent vessel. (see <a href="http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005223#sec017" target="_blank">Materials and Methods</a>) <b>(d)</b> Optimization of local branching on a plane finds the optimal location of the branching junction <i>J</i> when the unshared endpoints (<i>V</i>_<i>i</i>) and the radii (<i>r</i>_<i>i</i>) are fixed (see General framework for branching angle optimization and asymmetry).</p

Histograms or frequency distributions of optimal asymmetry ratios for length (<i>λ</i>_<i>l</i>) and branching angle (<i>λ</i>_<i>θ</i>) derived from material-cost (MC) optimizations.

<p>Surface-area (MC-SA) results are shown as solid lines and volume (MC-V) results are shown as dashed lines for <b>(a)</b> mouse lung and <b>(b)</b> human head and torso.</p

Histograms or frequency distributions of the asymmetry ratios for radius (<i>λ</i>_<i>r</i>), length (<i>λ</i>_<i>l</i>), and branching angles (<i>λ</i>_<i>θ</i>) of vascular networks.

<p><b>(a)</b> mouse lung (1 individual) and <b>(b)</b> human head and torso (18 individuals). Note that radius and branching angle asymmetry ratios are both skewed towards perfect symmetry, whereas the length asymmetry ratio shows no skew and reveals much more asymmetry. <b>(c)</b> Histograms of branching angles for combined data of human and mouse networks appear to be unimodal both for <i>θ</i>₀ and for <i>θ</i>₁ & <i>θ</i>₂ with peaks at 1.51 and 2.21 radians, respectively.</p

Statistical comparison of material-cost (MC) optimizations and random spatial constraints with empirical data.

<p>Statistical comparison of material-cost (MC) optimizations and random spatial constraints with empirical data.</p