Tumor necrosis factor–like cytokine 1A plays a role in inflammatory bowel disease pathogenesis
Fanxiang Meng, Xuefeng Jiang, Xiao Wang, Qianqian Zheng, Xiaonan Wang, Chenxue Mei, Siqi Yan, Yuting He, Junxiu Xue, Xiaoqing Zhang, Wenda Fu, Yong You, Jingbo Zhai, Yuanyuan Wang, Xun Sun
Abstract
The binding of tumor necrosis factor–like cytokine 1A (TL1A) to death receptor 3 (DR3) plays an important role in the interaction between dendritic cells (DCs) and T cells and contributes to intestinal inflammation development. However, the mechanism by which DCs expressing TL1A mediate helper T (Th) cell differentiation in the intestinal lamina propria (LP) during the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease remains unclear. In this study, we found that TL1A/DR3 promoted Th1 and Th17 cell differentiation in T-T and DC-T cell interaction-dependent manners. TL1A-deficient CD4 + T cells failed to polarize into Th1/Th17 cells and did not cause colonic inflammation in a T cell transfer colitis model. Notably, TL1A was located in the cytoplasm and nuclei of DCs, positively regulated the DC-specific ICAM-grabbing nonintegrin/RAF1/nuclear factor κB signaling pathway, enhanced the antigen uptake ability of DCs, and promoted TLR4-mediated DC activation, inducing naive CD4 + T cell differentiation into Th1 and Th17 cells. Our work reveals that TL1A plays a regulatory role in inflammatory bowel disease pathogenesis.