Published online before print May 31, 2007

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(American Journal of Pathology. 2007;171:32-42.)
© 2007 American Society for Investigative Pathology
DOI: 10.2353/ajpath.2007.061067

The Psoriatic Transcriptome Closely Resembles That Induced by Interleukin-1 in Cultured Keratinocytes

Dominance of Innate Immune Responses in Psoriasis

John B. Mee^*, Claire M. Johnson, Nilesh Morar, Frank Burslem and Richard W. Groves^*

From St. John’s Institute of Dermatology,^* National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre, King’s College London, London; Pfizer Global Research and Development, Sandwich, Kent; and the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

Psoriasis has been considered an autoimmune, T cell-mediated disorder in which adaptive immune responses predominate over those of non-antigen-specific innate immunity. To test this hypothesis, we profiled the transcriptome of psoriatic tissue and compared the data with that from cultured human keratinocytes exposed to the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin (IL)-1 and the Th1 cytokine interferon-. When compared with patient-matched, nonlesional skin biopsies, psoriatic samples exhibited regulation of 90 transcripts including several members of the epidermal differentiation complex, molecules with antimicrobial activity, and hyperproliferation-associated keratins. Stimulation of keratinocytes with interferon- resulted in regulation of 252 transcripts, with particularly strong expression of the CXCR3-binding ligands CXCL9, -10, and -11 and class II major histocompatibility complex genes, primarily those of the HLA-DR and -DP families. In contrast, the transcriptome resulting from exposure of keratinocytes to IL-1 elicited differences in just 19 transcripts, particularly genes within the epidermal differentiation complex and antimicrobial molecules, including PI3 and DEFB4. Major differences between the two keratinocyte transcriptomes were exhibited with only five induced IL-1 transcripts also regulated in the interferon- set. Unexpectedly, there was a high correlation between psoriatic lesional tissue and the IL-1 transcriptome. These findings suggest that the inflammatory milieu in the epidermal microenvironment in psoriasis is more likely dependent on evolutionarily ancient cytokines such as IL-1, rather than those of the adaptive immune response.