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81 Publications visible to you, out of a total of 81
Orphan Nuclear Receptor ERRγ Is a Novel Transcriptional Regulator of IL-6 Mediated Hepatic BMP6 Gene Expression in Mice

Abstract

Not specified

Authors: Kamalakannan Radhakrishnan, Yong-Hoon Kim, Yoon Seok Jung, Jina Kim, Don-Kyu Kim, Sung Jin Cho, In-Kyu Lee, Steven Dooley, Chul-Ho Lee, Hueng-Sik Choi

Date Published: 1st Oct 2020

Publication Type: Journal

Hepatocyte-specific NRF2 activation controls fibrogenesis and carcinogenesis in steatohepatitis

Abstract (Expand)

Background & Aims Inflammation in chronic liver diseases induces oxidative stress and thus may contribute to progression of liver injury, fibrosis, and carcinogenesis. The KEAP1/NRF2 axis is a major … regulator of cellular redox balance. In the present study, we investigated whether the KEAP1/NRF2 system is involved in liver disease progression in human and mice. Methods The clinical relevance of oxidative stress was investigated in a well-characterized cohort of NAFLD patients (n=63) by liver RNA sequencing and correlated with histological and clinical parameters. For functional analysis hepatocyte-specific NEMO knock-out (NEMO Δhepa) mice were crossed with hepatocyte-specific KEAP1 knock-out (KEAP1 Δhepa) mice. Results Immunohistochemical analysis of human liver sections showed increased oxidative stress and high NRF2 expression in patients with chronic liver disease. RNA sequencing of liver samples in a human pediatric NAFLD cohort revealed a significant increase of NRF2 activation correlating with the grade of inflammation, but not with the grade of steatosis, which could be confirmed in a second adult NASH cohort. In mice, microarray analysis revealed that KEAP1 deletion induces NRF2 target genes involved in glutathione metabolism and xenobiotic stress (e.g., Nqo1). Furthermore, deficiency of one of the most important antioxidants, glutathione (GSH), in NEMO Δhepa livers was rescued after deleting KEAP1. As a consequence, NEMO Δhepa/KEAP1 Δhepa livers showed reduced apoptosis compared to NEMO Δhepa livers as well as a dramatic downregulation of genes involved in cell cycle regulation and DNA replication. Consequently, NEMO Δhepa/KEAP1 Δhepa compared to NEMO Δhepa livers displayed decreased fibrogenesis, lower tumor incidence, reduced tumor number, and decreased tumor size. Conclusions NRF2 activation in NASH patients correlates with the grade of inflammation, but not steatosis. Functional analysis in mice demonstrated that NRF2 activation in chronic liver disease is protective by ameliorating fibrogenesis, initiation and progression of hepatocellular carcinogenesis.

Authors: Antje Mohs, Tobias Otto, Kai Markus Schneider, Mona Peltzer, Mark Boekschoten, Christian H. Holland, Christian A. Hudert, Laura Kalveram, Susanna Wiegand, Julio Saez-Rodriguez, Thomas Longerich, Jan G. Hengstler, Christian Trautwein

Date Published: 1st Oct 2020

Publication Type: Journal

Expression of TLR-2 in hepatocellular carcinoma is associated with tumour proliferation, angiogenesis and Caspase-3 expression

Abstract

Not specified

Authors: Fatma El-Zahraa Ammar Mohamed, Seddik Hammad, Tu Vinh Luong, Bedair Dewidar, Rajai Al-Jehani, Nathan Davies, Steven Dooley, Rajiv Jalan

Date Published: 1st Aug 2020

Publication Type: Journal

Expression of TLR-2 in hepatocellular carcinoma is associated with tumour proliferation, angiogenesis and Caspase-3 expression.

Abstract (Expand)

AIMS: Unlike other Toll-like receptors (TLRs), the role of toll like receptor 2 (TLR-2) in the pathogenesis of chronic liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is not well studied. We, therefore, … set out to investigate the expression of TLR-2 in different chronic liver disease states along with other markers of cell death, cellular proliferation and tissue vascularisation METHODS AND RESULTS: Immunohistochemistry was performed on liver tissue microarrays comprising hepatitis, cirrhosis and HCC patient samples using antibodies against TLR-2, Ki-67, Caspase-3 and VEGF. This was done in order to characterise receptor expression and translocation, apoptosis, cell proliferation and vascularisation. Cytoplasmic TLR-2 expression was found to be weak in 5/8 normal liver cases, 10/19 hepatitis cases and 8/21 cirrhosis patients. Moderate to strong TLR-2 expression was observed in some cases of hepatitis and cirrhosis. Both, nuclear and cytoplasmic TLR-2 expression was present in HCC with weak intensity in 11/41 cases, and moderate to strong staining in 19/41 cases. Eleven HCC cases were TLR-2 negative. Surprisingly, both cytoplasmic and nuclear TLR-2 expression in HCC were found to significantly correlate with proliferative index (r = 0.24 and 0.37), Caspase-3 expression (r = 0.27 and 0.38) and vascularisation (r = 0.56 and 0.23). Further, nuclear TLR-2 localisation was predominant in HCC, whereas cytoplasmic expression was more prevalent in hepatitis and cirrhosis. Functionally, treatment of HUH7 HCC cells with a TLR-2 agonist induced the expression of cellular proliferation and vascularisation markers CD34 and VEGF. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate a positive correlation between the expression of TLR-2 and other markers of proliferation and vascularisation in HCC which suggests a possible role for TLR-2 in HCC pathogenesis.

Authors: F. E. A. Mohamed, S. Hammad, T. V. Luong, B. Dewidar, R. Al-Jehani, N. Davies, S. Dooley, R. Jalan

Date Published: 25th Jul 2020

Publication Type: Journal

Disentangling molecular mechanisms regulating sensitization of interferon alpha signal transduction.

Abstract (Expand)

Tightly interlinked feedback regulators control the dynamics of intracellular responses elicited by the activation of signal transduction pathways. Interferon alpha (IFNalpha) orchestrates antiviral … responses in hepatocytes, yet mechanisms that define pathway sensitization in response to prestimulation with different IFNalpha doses remained unresolved. We establish, based on quantitative measurements obtained for the hepatoma cell line Huh7.5, an ordinary differential equation model for IFNalpha signal transduction that comprises the feedback regulators STAT1, STAT2, IRF9, USP18, SOCS1, SOCS3, and IRF2. The model-based analysis shows that, mediated by the signaling proteins STAT2 and IRF9, prestimulation with a low IFNalpha dose hypersensitizes the pathway. In contrast, prestimulation with a high dose of IFNalpha leads to a dose-dependent desensitization, mediated by the negative regulators USP18 and SOCS1 that act at the receptor. The analysis of basal protein abundance in primary human hepatocytes reveals high heterogeneity in patient-specific amounts of STAT1, STAT2, IRF9, and USP18. The mathematical modeling approach shows that the basal amount of USP18 determines patient-specific pathway desensitization, while the abundance of STAT2 predicts the patient-specific IFNalpha signal response.

Authors: F. Kok, M. Rosenblatt, M. Teusel, T. Nizharadze, V. Goncalves Magalhaes, C. Dachert, T. Maiwald, A. Vlasov, M. Wasch, S. Tyufekchieva, K. Hoffmann, G. Damm, D. Seehofer, T. Boettler, M. Binder, J. Timmer, M. Schilling, U. Klingmuller

Date Published: 23rd Jul 2020

Publication Type: Journal

Lipid-encapsulated siRNA for hepatocyte-directed treatment of advanced liver disease

Abstract (Expand)

Lipid-based RNA nanocarriers have been recently accepted as a novel therapeutic option in humans, thus increasing the therapeutic options for patients. Tailored nanomedicines will enable to treat chronic … liver disease (CLD) and end-stage liver cancer, disorders with high mortality and few treatment options. Here, we investigated the curative potential of gene therapy of a key molecule in CLD, the c-Jun N-terminal kinase-2 (Jnk2). Delivery to hepatocytes was achieved using a lipid-based clinically employable siRNA formulation that includes a cationic aminolipid to knockdown Jnk2 (named siJnk2). After assessing the therapeutic potential of siJnk2 treatment, non-invasive imaging demonstrated reduced apoptotic cell death and improved hepatocarcinogenesis was evidenced by improved liver parenchyma as well as ameliorated markers of hepatic damage, reduced fibrogenesis in 1-year-old mice. Strikingly, chronic siJnk2 treatment reduced premalignant nodules, indicative of tumor initiation. Furthermore, siJnk2 treatment led to a significant activation of the immune cell compartment. In conclusion, Jnk2 knockdown in hepatocytes ameliorated hepatitis, fibrogenesis, and initiation of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and hence might be a suitable therapeutic option, to define novel molecular targets for precision medicine in CLD.

Authors: Marius Maximilian Woitok, Miguel Eugenio Zoubek, Dennis Doleschel, Matthias Bartneck, Mohamed Ramadan Mohamed, Fabian Kießling, Wiltrud Lederle, Christian Trautwein, Francisco Javier Cubero

Date Published: 1st May 2020

Publication Type: Journal

Caveolin-1 Impacts on TGF-beta Regulation of Metabolic Gene Signatures in Hepatocytes.

Abstract (Expand)

Caveolin-1 (CAV1) is a membrane protein associated with metabolism in various cell types. The transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta) is a pro-fibrogenic cytokine in the liver, but its metabolic … gene signatures remain unclear to date. We have previously shown that CAV1 alters TGF-beta signaling and blocks its pro-apoptotic function. Here, we defined TGF-beta-induced metabolic gene signatures in hepatocytes and assessed whether CAV1 abundance affects TGF-beta control of those metabolic genes. Microarray analyses of primary hepatocytes after TGF-beta stimulation (48 h) showed differential expression of 4224 genes, of which 721 are metabolic genes (adjusted p < 0.001). Functional annotation analysis revealed that TGF-beta mainly suppresses metabolic gene network, including genes involved in glutathione, cholesterol, fatty acid, and amino acid metabolism. TGF-beta also upregulated several genes related to glycan metabolism and ion transport. In contrast to TGF-beta effects, CAV1 knockdown triggered the upregulation of metabolic genes. Immortalized mouse hepatocytes (AML12 cells) were used to validate the gene changes induced by TGF-beta stimulation and CAV1 knockdown. Noteworthy, of the TGF-beta metabolic target genes, CAV1 modulated the expression of 228 (27%). In conclusion, we present several novel metabolic gene signatures of TGF-beta in hepatocytes and show that CAV1 abundance alters almost a third of these genes. These findings could enable a better understanding of TGF-beta function in normal and diseased liver especially where differential CAV1 level is implicated.

Authors: M. Han, Z. C. Nwosu, W. Pioronska, M. P. Ebert, S. Dooley, C. Meyer

Date Published: 22nd Feb 2020

Publication Type: Journal

Hepatocyte caveolin-1 modulates metabolic gene profiles and functions in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Abstract (Expand)

Caveolin-1 (CAV1) is a crucial regulator of lipid accumulation and metabolism. Previous studies have shown that global Cav1 deficiency affects lipid metabolism and hepatic steatosis. We aimed to analyze … the consequences of hepatocyte-specific Cav1 knockout under healthy conditions and upon non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) development. Male and female hepatocyte-specific Cav1 knockout (HepCAV1ko) mice were fed a methionine/choline (MCD) deficient diet for 4 weeks. MCD feeding caused severe hepatic steatosis and slight fibrosis. In addition, liver function parameters, i.e., ALT, AST, and GLDH, were elevated, while cholesterol and glucose level were reduced upon MCD feeding. These differences were not affected by hepatocyte-specific Cav1 knockout. Microarray analysis showed strong differences in gene expression profiles of livers from HepCAV1ko mice compared those of global Cav1 knockout animals. Pathway enrichment analysis identified that metabolic alterations were sex-dimorphically regulated by hepatocyte-specific CAV1. In male HepCAV1ko mice, metabolic pathways were suppressed in NAFLD, whereas in female knockout mice induced. Moreover, gender-specific transcription profiles were modulated in healthy animals. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that hepatocyte-specific Cav1 knockout significantly altered gene profiles, did not affect liver steatosis and fibrosis in NAFLD and that gender had severe impact on gene expression patterns in healthy and diseased hepatocyte-specific Cav1 knockout mice.

Authors: M. Han, W. Pioronska, S. Wang, Z. C. Nwosu, C. Sticht, S. Wang, Y. Gao, M. P. Ebert, S. Dooley, C. Meyer

Date Published: 6th Feb 2020

Publication Type: Journal

TGF-β2 silencing to target biliary-derived liver diseases

Abstract

Not specified

Authors: Anne Dropmann, Steven Dooley, Bedair Dewidar, Seddik Hammad, Tatjana Dediulia, Julia Werle, Vanessa Hartwig, Shahrouz Ghafoory, Stefan Woelfl, Hanna Korhonen, Michel Janicot, Katja Wosikowski, Timo Itzel, Andreas Teufel, Detlef Schuppan, Ana Stojanovic, Adelheid Cerwenka, Stefanie Nittka, Albrecht Piiper, Timo Gaiser, Naiara Beraza, Malgorzata Milkiewicz, Piotr Milkiewicz, John G Brain, David E J Jones, Thomas S Weiss, Ulrich M Zanger, Matthias Ebert, Nadja M Meindl-Beinker

Date Published: 28th Jan 2020

Publication Type: Not specified

TGF-beta in Hepatic Stellate Cell Activation and Liver Fibrogenesis-Updated 2019.

Abstract (Expand)

Liver fibrosis is an advanced liver disease condition, which could progress to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. To date, there is no direct approved antifibrotic therapy, and current treatment … is mainly the removal of the causative factor. Transforming growth factor (TGF)-beta is a master profibrogenic cytokine and a promising target to treat fibrosis. However, TGF-beta has broad biological functions and its inhibition induces non-desirable side effects, which override therapeutic benefits. Therefore, understanding the pleiotropic effects of TGF-beta and its upstream and downstream regulatory mechanisms will help to design better TGF-beta based therapeutics. Here, we summarize recent discoveries and milestones on the TGF-beta signaling pathway related to liver fibrosis and hepatic stellate cell (HSC) activation, emphasizing research of the last five years. This comprises impact of TGF-beta on liver fibrogenesis related biological processes, such as senescence, metabolism, reactive oxygen species generation, epigenetics, circadian rhythm, epithelial mesenchymal transition, and endothelial-mesenchymal transition. We also describe the influence of the microenvironment on the response of HSC to TGF-beta. Finally, we discuss new approaches to target the TGF-beta pathway, name current clinical trials, and explain promises and drawbacks that deserve to be adequately addressed.

Authors: B. Dewidar, C. Meyer, S. Dooley, A. N. Meindl-Beinker

Date Published: 11th Nov 2019

Publication Type: Not specified

Transfer of regulatory knowledge from human to mouse for functional genomics analysis

Abstract (Expand)

Transcriptome profiling followed by differential gene expression analysis often leads to lists of genes that are hard to analyze and interpret. Functional genomics tools are powerful approaches for … downstream analysis, as they summarize the large and noisy gene expression space into a smaller number of biological meaningful features. In particular, methods that estimate the activity of processes by mapping transcripts level to process members are popular. However, footprints of either a pathway or transcription factor (TF) on gene expression show superior performance over mapping-based gene sets. These footprints are largely developed for humans and their usability in the broadly-used model organism Mus musculus is uncertain. Evolutionary conservation of the gene regulatory system suggests that footprints of human pathways and TFs can functionally characterize mice data. In this paper we analyze this hypothesis. We perform a comprehensive benchmark study exploiting two state-of-the-art footprint methods, DoRothEA and an extended version of PROGENy. These methods infer TF and pathway activity, respectively. Our results show that both can recover mouse perturbations, confirming our hypothesis that footprints are conserved between mice and humans. Subsequently, we illustrate the usability of PROGENy and DoRothEA by recovering pathway/TF-disease associations from newly generated disease sets. Additionally, we provide pathway and TF activity scores for a large collection of human and mouse perturbation and disease experiments (2374). We believe that this resource, available for interactive exploration and download (https://saezlab.shinyapps.io/footprint_scores/), can have broad applications including the study of diseases and therapeutics.

Authors: Christian H. Holland, Bence Szalai, Julio Saez-Rodriguez

Date Published: 1st Sep 2019

Publication Type: Not specified

Assessment of Chemotherapy-Induced Organ Damage with Ga-68 Labeled Duramycin.

Abstract (Expand)

PURPOSE: Evaluation of [(68)Ga]NODAGA-duramycin as a positron emission tomography (PET) tracer of cell death for whole-body detection of chemotherapy-induced organ toxicity. PROCEDURES: Tracer specificity … of Ga-68 labeled NODAGA-duramycin was determined in vitro using competitive binding experiments. Organ uptake was analyzed in untreated and doxorubicin, busulfan, and cisplatin-treated mice 2 h after intravenous injection of [(68)Ga]NODAGA-duramycin. In vivo data were validated by immunohistology and blood parameters. RESULTS: In vitro experiments confirmed specific binding of [(68)Ga]NODAGA-duramycin. Organ toxicities were detected successfully using [(68)Ga]NODAGA-duramycin PET/X-ray computed tomography (CT) and confirmed by immunohistochemistry and blood parameter analysis. Organ toxicities in livers and kidneys showed similar trends in PET/CT and immunohistology. Busulfan and cisplatin-related organ toxicities in heart, liver, and lungs were detected earlier by PET/CT than by blood parameters and immunohistology. CONCLUSION: [(68)Ga]NODAGA-duramycin PET/CT was successfully applied to non-invasively detect chemotherapy-induced organ toxicity with high sensitivity in mice. It, therefore, represents a promising alternative to standard toxicological analyses with a high translational potential.

Authors: A. Rix, N. I. Drude, A. Mrugalla, F. Baskaya, K. Y. Pak, B. Gray, H. J. Kaiser, R. H. Tolba, E. Fiegle, W. Lederle, F. M. Mottaghy, F. Kiessling

Date Published: 8th Aug 2019

Publication Type: Not specified

Benchmark and integration of resources for the estimation of human transcription factor activities

Abstract (Expand)

The prediction of transcription factor (TF) activities from the gene expression of their targets (i.e., TF regulon) is becoming a widely used approach to characterize the functional status of transcriptional … regulatory circuits. Several strategies and data sets have been proposed to link the target genes likely regulated by a TF, each one providing a different level of evidence. The most established ones are (1) manually curated repositories, (2) interactions derived from ChIP-seq binding data, (3) in silico prediction of TF binding on gene promoters, and (4) reverse-engineered regulons from large gene expression data sets. However, it is not known how these different sources of regulons affect the TF activity estimations and, thereby, downstream analysis and interpretation. Here we compared the accuracy and biases of these strategies to define human TF regulons by means of their ability to predict changes in TF activities in three reference benchmark data sets. We assembled a collection of TF–target interactions for 1541 human TFs and evaluated how different molecular and regulatory properties of the TFs, such as the DNA-binding domain, specificities, or mode of interaction with the chromatin, affect the predictions of TF activity. We assessed their coverage and found little overlap on the regulons derived from each strategy and better performance by literature-curated information followed by ChIP-seq data. We provide an integrated resource of all TF–target interactions derived through these strategies, with confidence scores, as a resource for enhanced prediction of TF activities.

Authors: Luz Garcia-Alonso, Christian H. Holland, Mahmoud M. Ibrahim, Denes Turei, Julio Saez-Rodriguez

Date Published: 1st Aug 2019

Publication Type: Not specified

Genetic Variants in the Promoter Region of the Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor are Associated with the Severity of Hepatitis C Virus-Induced Liver Fibrosis.

Abstract (Expand)

Two polymorphisms in the promoter region of macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) - rs755622 and rs5844572 - exhibit prognostic relevance in inflammatory diseases. The aim of this study was to … investigate a correlation between these MIF promoter polymorphisms and the severity of hepatitis C virus (HCV)-induced liver fibrosis. Our analysis included two independent patient cohorts with HCV-induced liver fibrosis (504 and 443 patients, respectively). The genotype of the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) -173 G/C and the repeat number of the microsatellite polymorphism -794 CATT5-8 were determined in DNA samples and correlated with fibrosis severity. In the first cohort, homozygous carriers of the C allele in the rs755622 had lower fibrosis stages compared to heterozygous carriers or wild types (1.25 vs. 2.0 vs. 2.0; p = 0.03). Additionally, >/=7 microsatellite repeats were associated with lower fibrosis stages (<F2) (p = 0.04). Comparable tendencies were observed in the second independent cohort, where fibrosis was assessed using transient elastography. However, once cirrhosis had been established, the C/C genotype and higher microsatellite repeats correlated with impaired liver function and a higher prevalence of hepatocellular carcinoma. Our study demonstrates that specific MIF polymorphisms are associated with disease severity and complications of HCV-induced fibrosis in a stage- and context-dependent manner.

Authors: T. H. Wirtz, P. Fischer, C. Backhaus, I. Bergmann, E. F. Brandt, D. Heinrichs, M. T. Koenen, K. M. Schneider, T. Eggermann, I. Kurth, C. Stoppe, J. Bernhagen, T. Bruns, J. Fischer, T. Berg, C. Trautwein, M. L. Berres

Date Published: 31st Jul 2019

Publication Type: Journal

Cooperative and distinct functions of MK2 and MK3 in the regulation of the macrophage transcriptional response to lipopolysaccharide.

Abstract (Expand)

The p38(MAPK) downstream targets MAPKAP kinases (MK) 2 and 3 are critical for the regulation of the macrophage response to LPS. The extents to which these two kinases act cooperatively and distinctly … in regulating LPS-induced inflammatory cytokine expression are still unclear. To address this uncertainty, whole transcriptome analyses were performed using bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMDM) generated from MK2(-/-) or MK2/3(-/-) animals and their wild-type littermates. The results suggest that in BMDM, MK2 and MK3 not only cooperatively regulate the transcript expression of signaling intermediates, including IL-10, IL-19, CXCL2 and the IL-4 receptor (IL-4R)alpha subunit, they also exert distinct regulatory effects on the expression of specific transcripts. Based on the differential regulation of gene expression by MK2 and MK3, at least six regulatory patterns were identified. Importantly, we confirmed our previous finding, which showed that in the absence of MK2, MK3 negatively regulates IFN-beta. Moreover, this genome-wide analysis identified the regulation of Cr1A, NOD1 and Serpina3f as similar to that of IFN-beta. In the absence of MK2, MK3 also delayed the nuclear translocation of NFkappaB by delaying the ubiquitination and subsequent degradation of IkappaBbeta, reflecting the substantial plasticity of the response of BMDM to LPS.

Authors: C. Ehlting, J. Rex, U. Albrecht, R. Deenen, C. Tiedje, K. Kohrer, O. Sawodny, M. Gaestel, D. Haussinger, J. G. Bode

Date Published: 30th Jul 2019

Publication Type: Not specified

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