Journal
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Volume 6, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/srep39714
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Funding
- Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health
- National Cancer Institute
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
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Pulmonary fibrosis is a potentially lethal late adverse event of thoracic irradiation. Prior research indicates that unrestrained TGF-beta 1 and/or type 2 cytokine-driven immune responses promote fibrosis following radiation injury, but the full spectrum of factors governing this pathology remains unclear. Interleukin 13 (IL-13) is a key factor in fibrotic disease associated with helminth infection, but it is unclear whether it plays a similar role in radiation-induced lung fibrosis. Using a mouse model, we tested the hypothesis that IL-13 drives the progression of radiation-induced pulmonary fibrosis. Irradiated lungs from wild-type c57BL/6NcR mice accumulated alternatively-activated macrophages, displayed elevated levels of IL-13, and extensive fibrosis, whereas IL-13 deficient mice were resistant to these changes. Furthermore, plasma from irradiated wild-type mice showed a transient increase in the IL-13 saturated fraction of the circulating decoy receptor IL-13Ra2. Finally, we determined that therapeutic neutralization of IL-13, during the period of IL-13Ra2 saturation was sufficient to protect mice from lung fibrosis. Taken together, our results demonstrate that IL-13 is a major regulator of radiation-induced lung injury and demonstrates that strategies focusing on IL-13 may be useful in screening for timely delivery of anti-IL-13 therapeutics.
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