(5R)-5-Hydroxytriptolide (LLDT-8) induces substantial epigenetic mediated immune response network changes in fibroblast-like synoviocytes from rheumatoid arthritis patients

Sci Rep. 2019 Aug 1;9(1):11155. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-47411-1.

Abstract

Tripterygium is a traditional Chinese medicine that has widely been used in the treatment of rheumatic disease. (5R)-5-hydroxytriptolide (LLDT-8) is an extracted compound from Tripterygium, which has been shown to have lower cytotoxicity and relatively higher immunosuppressive activity when compared to Tripterygium. However, our understanding of LLDT-8-induced epigenomic impact and overall regulatory changes in key cell types remains limited. Doing so will provide critically important mechanistic information about how LLDT-8 wields its immunosuppressive activity. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of LLDT-8 on transcriptome including mRNAs and long non-coding RNA (lncRNAs) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLS) by a custom genome-wide microarray assay. Significant differential expressed genes were validated by QPCR. Our work shows that 394 genes (281 down- and 113 up-regulated) were significantly differentially expressed in FLS responding to the treatment of LLDT-8. KEGG pathway analysis showed 20 pathways were significantly enriched and the most significantly enriched pathways were relevant to Immune reaction, including cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction (P = 4.61 × 10-13), chemokine signaling pathway (P = 1.01 × 10-5) and TNF signaling pathway (P = 2.79 × 10-4). Furthermore, we identified 618 highly negatively correlated lncRNA-mRNA pairs from the selected significantly differential lncRNA and mRNA including 27 cis-regulated and 591 trans-regulated lncRNA-mRNAs modules. KEGG and GO based function analysis to differential lncRNA also shown the enrichment of immune response. Finally, lncRNA-transcription factor (TF) and lncRNA-TF-mRNA co-expression network were constructed with high specific network characteristics, indicating LLDT-8 would influence the expression network within the whole FLS cells. The results indicated that the LLDT-8 would mainly influence the FLS cells systemically and specially in the process of immune related pathways.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Arthritis, Rheumatoid / drug therapy*
  • Arthritis, Rheumatoid / pathology
  • Cytokines / metabolism
  • Diterpenes / pharmacology*
  • Epigenomics
  • Female
  • Fibroblasts
  • Gene Expression Regulation / drug effects
  • Humans
  • Immunity / drug effects
  • Immunity / genetics*
  • Immunosuppressive Agents / pharmacology
  • Male
  • RNA, Long Noncoding
  • Synoviocytes / immunology*

Substances

  • 5-hydroxytriptolide
  • Cytokines
  • Diterpenes
  • Immunosuppressive Agents
  • RNA, Long Noncoding