THE INFLAMMATORY RESPONSE FOLLOWING ISCHEMIC STROKE IS DOMINATED BY INNATE IMMUNE CELLS: resident microglia and blood-derived macrophages. The ambivalent role of these cells in stroke outcome might be explained in part by the acquisition of distinct functional phenotypes: classically (M1) and alternatively activated (M2) macrophages. To shed light on the crosstalk between hypoxic neurons and ma...

The Dot/Icm system of Legionella pneumophila triggers activation of caspase-3 during early stages of infection of human macrophages, but apoptosis is delayed until late stages of infection. During early stages of infection of mouse macrophages, the organism triggers rapid caspase-1-mediated cytotoxicity, which is mediated by bacterial flagellin. However, it is not known whether caspase-1 is tri...

Macrophage phenotype and function varies according to their polarized state, which in turn is dependent on microenvironmental stimuli. Under normal physiological conditions, lung interstitial macrophages that express interleukin (IL)-10 are considered to serve regulatory roles in the prevention of allergic reactions in the airways. However, the phenotypic profile of lung interstitial macrophage...

We hypothesize that selected combinations of nutrients commonly encountered in the human diet, suppress asthma-associated airway inflammation more effectively than currently available anti-inflammatory medications. Here we demonstrate that biflavones and terpenes, distributed widely in human diet (in this case derived from Ginkgo biloba) synergize with the carotenoid antioxidant astaxanthin and...

Crosstalk between breast cancer and macrophages has potential implications for tumor metastasis. This study investigates macrophage polarization induced by triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) cell-derived exosomes that promote lymph node (LN) metastasis in orthotopic TNBC models. The MDA-MB-231 cancer cell line expressing the exosomal CD63-red fluorescence (RFP) fusion protein was generated to...

Inflammasomes are multiprotein platforms that activate caspase-1, which leads to the processing and secretion of the proinflammatory cytokines IL-1β and IL-18. Previous studies demonstrated that bacterial RNAs activate the nucleotide-binding domain, leucine-rich-repeat-containing family, pyrin domain-containing 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome in both human and murine macrophages. Interestingly, only mRN...

The ability to differentiate genetically modified mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells into functional macrophages provides a potentially attractive resource to study host-pathogen interactions without the need for animal experimentation. This is particularly useful in instances where the gene of interest is essential and a knockout mouse is not available. Here we differentiated mouse ES cells into ...

BACKGROUND HIV-1 infected macrophages play an important role in rendering resting T cells permissive for infection, in spreading HIV-1 to T cells, and in the pathogenesis of AIDS dementia. During highly active anti-retroviral treatment (HAART), macrophages keep producing virus because tissue penetration of antiretrovirals is suboptimal and the efficacy of some is reduced. Thus, to cure HIV-1 in...

Studies were undertaken to determine whether Trypanosoma cruzi can invade and multiply within human monocytes and macrophages cultured in vitro and, if so, whether macrophages can be activated to inhibit the multiplication. A reticulotropic strain of T. cruzi was capable of infecting human monocytes and monocyte-derived macrophages. Intracellular multiplication was observed in both cell types w...