Wei Haiming, Sun Rui, Xiao Wei, Feng Jinbo, Zhen Chunyan, Xu Xiaoqun, Tian Zhigang
School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230027, China.
Cell Mol Immunol. 2004 Feb;1(1):63-70.
Type 2 cytokines are usually predominant in tumor patients and associated with tumor progression. To explore whether reversing of type 2 predominance could be a promising strategy in tumor immunotherapy, PBMC of 35 lung cancer patients and 19 healthy subjects were prepared and subjected to be examined for cytokine secretion and gene expression. Tetra-Methylpyrazine (TTMP), extracted from a traditional Chinese medicinal herb which has been used in clinic to reverse the Th2 status of cancer patients in China, was added to PBMC culture. Determined by RT-PCR, the positive percentages of mRNA expression of type 1 cytokines (8.6% for IFN-gamma and 11.4% for IL-2) were lower than those of type 2 cytokines (71.4% for IL-4, 60% for IL-6 and 80% for IL-10) in patients' PBMCs. The potential of gene expressing (measured as relative intensity to the ratio of beta-actin) in the patients for type 1 cytokines was also in a low level (0.111 for IFN-gamma, 0.119 for IL-2) in comparison with a relative high level for type 2 cytokines (0.319 for IL-4, 0.303 for IL-6 and 0.377 for IL-10). Meanwhile, both positive percentage and relative intensity of gene expression were lower for a type 1 cytokine-related transcription factor T-bet (31.4% and 0.142, respectively) than those for type 2 cytokine-related GATA3 (85.7% and 0.378, respectively). The blood serum levels of IFN-gamma and IL-2 in the patients were slightly lower but not significantly when compared with healthy control. In contrast, the levels IL-4 and IL-6 in patients were significantly higher than those in healthy subjects by ELISA analysis. TTMP could enhance supernatant concentration and gene expression levels of IFN-gamma, IL-2 and T-bet, but reduce those of type 2 cytokines. These results demonstrate that the lung cancer patients had a predominant expression of type 2 cytokines and TTMP could reverse the type 2 dominant status, which might offer an alternative therapeutic regime for lung cancer patients.
