Published online before print February 2, 2008

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Copyright © 2008 American Society for Investigative Pathology
American Journal of Pathology, doi:10.2353/ajpath.2008.070569

Accepted for publication November 20, 2007.

Article

A Role for the Receptor for Advanced Glycation End Products in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis

Judson M. Englert^*, Lana E. Hanford^*, Naftali Kaminski, Jacob M. Tobolewski^*, Roderick J. Tan^*, Cheryl L. Fattman, Lasse Ramsgaard^*, Thomas J. Richards, Inna Loutaev, Peter P. Nawroth^¶, Michael Kasper^||, Angelika Bierhaus^¶, and Tim D. Oury^*@

From the Department of Pathology,* University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the Dorothy P. and Richard P. Simmons Center for Interstitial Lung Diseases, Pulmonary Allergy and Critical Care Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington; the Department of Medicine I and Clinical Chemistry,^¶ University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany; and the Institute of Anatomy,^|| University of Technology Dresden, Dresden, Germany

^@ To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: tdoury{at}pitt.edu.

	Abstract

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a severely debilitating disease associated with a dismal prognosis. There are currently no effective therapies for IPF, thus the identification of novel therapeutic targets is greatly needed. The receptor for advanced glycation end products (RAGE) is a member of the immunoglobulin superfamily of cell surface receptors whose activation has been linked to various pathologies. In healthy adult animals, RAGE is expressed at the highest levels in the lung compared to other tissues. To investigate the hypothesis that RAGE is involved in IPF pathogenesis, we have examined its expression in two mouse models of pulmonary fibrosis and in human tissue from IPF patients. In each instance we observed a depletion of membrane RAGE and its soluble (decoy) isoform, sRAGE, in fibrotic lungs. In contrast to other diseases in which RAGE signaling promotes pathology, immunohistochemical and hydroxyproline quantification studies on aged RAGE-null mice indicate that these mice spontaneously develop pulmonary fibrosis-like alterations. Furthermore, when subjected to a model of pulmonary fibrosis, RAGE-null mice developed more severe fibrosis, as measured by hydroxyproline assay and histological scoring, than wild-type controls. Combined with data from other studies on mouse models of pulmonary fibrosis and human IPF tissues indicate that loss of RAGE contributes to IPF pathogenesis.