Project description:Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a demyelinating autoimmune disease of the central nervous system and the leading cause of lasting neurological disabilities in young adults. Increasing evidence suggests that early treatment prevents the development of disability. However, there have been no reliable serum markers to assist the early diagnosis. In addition, interferon (IFN)-β, which is the major treatment for MS, is not always effective. Therefore, the development of simple serological test to help the early diagnosis and predict responsiveness to IFN-β is of clinical importance. On the other hand, a transmembrane-type semaphorin, Sema4A, has been implicated in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) by regulating helper T (Th) cell differentiation. Thus, we aimed to identify the implications of Sema4A in diagnosis and pathogenesis of MS. Methods: We assayed serum Sema4A in 59 patients with relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS), 22 patients with clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) and 126 patients with other neurological diseases (OND) by developing a sandwich ELISA. To identify a source of soluble Sema4A and characteristics of MS patients with high levels of Sema4A, we analyzed peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from MS patients and healthy controls by flow cytometry (FACS) and gene chip analysis. The effect of Sema4A was examined in vitro and in vivo using an EAE model. Findings: Sema4A was significantly increased in sera of patients with MS and CIS compared to controls. Sema4A expression was increased on the surface of DCs in MS patients and shed from these cells in a metalloproteinase-dependent manner, affecting the Th17skewing. In addition, patients with high Sema4A levels exhibited more severe disabilities, and IFN-β treatment was not beneficial to those patients. Interpretation: Measuring Sema4A is a practical laboratory test to help diagnose MS and to predict responsiveness to IFN-β therapy. Microarray analysis showed that metalloproteinases such as ADAM 10 and MMPs 1, 3, 9, 12 and 25, which are reported to be involved in the pathogenesis of MS, were increased in PBMCs from MS patients with high Sema4A levels compared to those with low Sema4A and healthy controls. However, ADAM 17 and MMP 2 and 7 did not correlate with Sema4A levels. Taken together, these findings strongly suggest that Sema4A, abundantly expressed on monocytes and DCs in MS patients, is enzymatically cleaved and shed in a portion of the patients, which contributes to the high soluble Sema4A detected by the ELISA. Multiple sclerosis patients were classified according to Serum Sema4A levels. RNA from peripheral blood from 4 healthy controls, 3 MS patients with high serum Sema4A levels and 3 MS patients with low serum Sema4A levels was extracted and hybridized on Affymetrix microarrays. We sought to see whether there is corrlated genes with serum Sema4A levels or not, especially for genes for varions proteases.

Project description:Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a demyelinating autoimmune disease of the central nervous system and the leading cause of lasting neurological disabilities in young adults. Increasing evidence suggests that early treatment prevents the development of disability. However, there have been no reliable serum markers to assist the early diagnosis. In addition, interferon (IFN)-β, which is the major treatment for MS, is not always effective. Therefore, the development of simple serological test to help the early diagnosis and predict responsiveness to IFN-β is of clinical importance. On the other hand, a transmembrane-type semaphorin, Sema4A, has been implicated in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) by regulating helper T (Th) cell differentiation. Thus, we aimed to identify the implications of Sema4A in diagnosis and pathogenesis of MS. Methods: We assayed serum Sema4A in 59 patients with relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS), 22 patients with clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) and 126 patients with other neurological diseases (OND) by developing a sandwich ELISA. To identify a source of soluble Sema4A and characteristics of MS patients with high levels of Sema4A, we analyzed peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from MS patients and healthy controls by flow cytometry (FACS) and gene chip analysis. The effect of Sema4A was examined in vitro and in vivo using an EAE model. Findings: Sema4A was significantly increased in sera of patients with MS and CIS compared to controls. Sema4A expression was increased on the surface of DCs in MS patients and shed from these cells in a metalloproteinase-dependent manner, affecting the Th17skewing. In addition, patients with high Sema4A levels exhibited more severe disabilities, and IFN-β treatment was not beneficial to those patients. Interpretation: Measuring Sema4A is a practical laboratory test to help diagnose MS and to predict responsiveness to IFN-β therapy. Microarray analysis showed that metalloproteinases such as ADAM 10 and MMPs 1, 3, 9, 12 and 25, which are reported to be involved in the pathogenesis of MS, were increased in PBMCs from MS patients with high Sema4A levels compared to those with low Sema4A and healthy controls. However, ADAM 17 and MMP 2 and 7 did not correlate with Sema4A levels. Taken together, these findings strongly suggest that Sema4A, abundantly expressed on monocytes and DCs in MS patients, is enzymatically cleaved and shed in a portion of the patients, which contributes to the high soluble Sema4A detected by the ELISA.

Project description:Genomic and epigenomic studies support that adenocarcinomas of the gallbladder develop according to a metaplasia-biliary intraepithelial neoplasia (BilIN)-adenocarcinoma histogenic sequence, in which metaplasia and BilIN are non-cancerous lesions of the epithelium. Moreover, recent genomic data suggest that adenocarcinoma can develop in a BilIN-dependent or -independent way, pointing toward patient-specific tumourigenic processes. Spatial transcriptomic data addressing these processes are still missing. Here, using GeoMx digital spatial profiling (NanoString), we characterized the spatial transcriptome of normal gallbladder epithelium, BilINs and adenocarcinoma coexisting within the same samples. To address intra-patient variability we profiled the whole transcriptome of a high number of regions of interest (ROIs) per sample in two patients (Patient #1, 81 year old woman: 24 ROIs; Patient #2, 53-year old man:32 ROIs), with each ROI covering approximately 200 cells of normal epithelium, low-grade BilIN, high-grade BilIN or adenocarcinoma. Our results showed that each type of lesion displayed little transcriptomic variability within the same patient, but differed significantly between patients. They also suggested that adenocarcinoma can derive from high-grade BilIN or from low-grade BilIN, with co-existing high-grade BilIN evolving via a distinct process in the latter case. We also provide strong evidence for patient-specific tumourigenic mechanisms, characterized by distinct sequences of signalling pathway activation. Among those pathways, we functionally investigated SEMAPHORIN 4A (SEMA4A) and provided evidence that repression of SEMA4A expression, as is observed in the gallbladder samples of the two patients, can enhance cell migration and survival, and perturb polarisation of the epithelial cells. In conclusion, our results support that gallbladder adenocarcinoma develops according to patient-specific processes that can be promoted by repression of SEMA4A. They underscore the need to gain gene expression data in addition to histological information to evaluate the risk of low-grade preneoplastic lesions.

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Potentiation of regulatory T cell stability and function via a neuropilin-1:semaphorin-4a axis

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