The Evaluation of Toll-Like Receptors and Cytokines Expression in Human Langerhans Cells Indued by Zymosan

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the modulatory effect of zymosan on human langerhans cells (LCs). The expression of Toll-like receptors (TLRs) and cytokines in LCs treated with zymosan was evaluated by determining the mRNA levels of TLR-1, TLR-2, TLR-4, TLR-9 and the mRNA levels of IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-12, IL-23, TNF-α, and the protein level of bioactive IL-12p70. Furthermore, correlation coefficient of the mRNA levels of TLRs and cytokines was also evaluated to determine their mutual effects. The examined 10 samples showed significant increase in the mRNA level of those cytokines in all. As for TLRs, significant increase in TLR-2, decrease in TLR-1 and TLR-4 though the changing extent were slight and no significant difference in TLR-9 was shown. No significant increase of bioactive IL-12p70 protein was shown. All cytokines except for IL-12 were positively correlated to each other (r>0.3) at 24 h after zymosan treatment and to TLR-2 at both 8 h and 24 h. As our conclusion, zymosan may modulate LCs by increasing transcriptional level of cytokines and TLR-2 expression. Inflammatory and non-inflammatory cytokines in zymosan-treated LCs changed expression in a balanced style, while IL-12 was increased in all samples regardless of other cytokines and TLRs levels. All the tested cytokines except IL-12 and TLR-2 have a mutual promotion effect.