The purpose of this study was to examine whether myeloid dendritic cells (mDCs) from patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and healthy controls (HCs) become similarly tolerogenic when exposed to IL-27 as this may represent a potential mechanism of autoimmune dysregulation. Our study focused on natural mDCs that were isolated from HCs and MS patient peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). After a 24-h treatment with IL-27 ± lipopolysaccharide (LPS), the mDCs were either harvested to identify IL-27-regulated gene expression or co-cultured with naive T-cells to measure how the treated DC affected T-cell proliferation and cytokine secretion. mDCs isolated from HCs but not untreated MS patients became functionally tolerogenic after IL-27 treatment. Although IL-27 induced both HC and untreated MS mDCs to produce similar amounts of IL-10, the tolerogenic HC mDCs expressed PD-L2, IDO1, and SOCS1, while the non-tolerogenic untreated MS mDCs expressed IDO1 and IL-6R. Cytokine and RNA analyses identified two signature blocks: the first identified genes associated with mDC tolerizing responses to IL-27, while the second was associated with the presence of MS. In contrast to mDCs from untreated MS patients, mDCs from HCs and IFNb-treated MS patients became tolerogenic in response to IL-27. The genes differentially expressed in the different donor IL-27-treated mDCs may contain targets that regulate mDC tolerogenic responses.
Keywords: IL-27; Programmed Death 1 receptor (PD1); Programmed Death Ligand 2 (PD-L2); innate immune response; lymphoproliferative assay; myeloid dendritic cells (mDCs); relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS).