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Recent studies suggest that vitamin A plays an inhibitory role with respect to "activation" of the hepatic Ito cell, a likely effector of hepatic fibrogenesis. Ito cell "activation" during fibrogenesis is characterized by a decrease in intracellular vitamin A and an increase in cellular proliferation and collagen production. To explore the hypothesis that retinoids have the capacity to diminish Ito cell activation, cultured Ito cells were exposed to retinoic acid and its effects assessed on three key features: cell proliferation, collagen protein production and mRNA abundance, and transforming growth factor j9 protein production. Retinoic acid was 100-1,OOOX more potent than retinol with respect to inhibition of Ito cell proliferation. Interstitial collagen and transforming growth factor f production were also reduced by 10-6 M retinoic acid. The relative abundance of type I collagen mRNA however, was not significantly altered. By contrast, retinoic acid administration to rats caused a marked reduction in the abundance of type I collagen mRNA in both total hepatic and purified Ito cell RNA. The relative abundance of rat hepatic fibronectin or apolipoprotein E mRNA was not significantly altered. These studies demonstrate that retinoic acid can differentially modulate several key features of hepatic fibrogenesis in vitro and in vivo. (J. Clin.

Hepatic stellate cells become activated into myofibroblast-like cells during the early stages of hepatic injury associated with fibrogenesis. The subsequent dysregulation of hepatic stellate cell collagen gene expression is a central pathogenetic step during the development of cirrhosis. The cytoplasmic Raf and mitogen-activated protein (MAPK) kinases were found to differentially regulate alpha I(I) collagen gene expression in activated stellate cells. This suggests an unappreciated branch point exists between Raf and MAPK. A MAPK-stimulatory signal was mapped to the most proximal NF-1 and Sp-1 binding domains of the 5'-untranslated region of the collagen gene. A Raf-inhibitory signal was mapped to a further upstream binding domain involving a novel 60-kDa DNA-binding protein (p60). The cell-specific expression and induction of p60 in stellate cells during the early stages of hepatic fibrogenesis in vivo suggest a central role for this pathway during liver injury and stellate cell activation.

Recent studies have demonstrated that 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (D3) can activate Raf kinase and induce Egr expression in cultured rat hepatic Ito cells (Lissoos, T. W., Beno, D. W. A., and Davis, B. H. (1993) J. Biol. Chem. 268, 25132-25138). Since Raf is an upstream activator of mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), the current study evaluated the ability of D3 to activate MAPK. D3-activated MAPK and induced its cytoplasmic to perinuclear translocation in Ito cells. MAPK activation was found to be protein kinase C-dependent, which was analogous to previous studies of D3 and Raf activation. To further explore the D3 cascade, a series of transient transfections were performed using dominant negative raf and MAPK mutant plasmids which effectively block Ras-induced Raf and MAPK activity, respectively. D3 induced a marked increase in the expression of a chloramphenicol acetyltransferase reporter gene linked to the Egr promoter (egr-CAT). When the dominant negative Raf plasmid was co-transfected, there was no significant reduction in egr-CAT. In contrast, when the dominant negative MAPK plasmid was co-transfected, egr-CAT induction was completely abolished. These results suggest that 1) D3 stimulates MAPK via a protein kinase C-dependent pathway, 2) D3-induced Egr expression can occur via a pathway independent of Ras-induced Raf, and 3) D3 absolutely requires MAPK activity for Egr expression.