Histatins are human salivary gland peptides with anti-microbial and anti-inflammatory activities. In this study, we hypothesized that histatin 5 binds to Porphyromonas gingivalis hemagglutinin B (HagB) and attenuates HagB-induced chemokine responses in human myeloid dendritic cells. Histatin 5 bound to immobilized HagB in a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) spectroscopy-based biosensor system. SPR spectroscopy kinetic and equilibrium analyses, protein microarray studies, and I-TASSER structural modeling studies all demonstrated two histatin 5 binding sites on HagB. One site had a stronger affinity with a KD1 of 1.9 μM and one site had a weaker affinity with a KD2 of 60.0 μM. Binding has biological implications and predictive modeling studies and exposure of dendritic cells both demonstrated that 20.0 μM histatin 5 attenuated (p < 0.05) 0.02 μM HagB-induced CCL3/MIP-1α, CCL4/MIP-1β, and TNFα responses. Thus histatin 5 is capable of attenuating chemokine responses, which may help control oral inflammation.

Human β-defensin-3 (HBD3) is a small, cationic, host defence peptide with broad antimicrobial activities and diverse innate immune functions. HBD3 binds to many microbial antigens and, in this study, we hypothesised that the known binding of HBD3 to Porphyromonas gingivalis recombinant haemagglutinin B (rHagB) alters, but does not inhibit, the binding of rHagB to human dendritic cells. To test this, human myeloid dendritic cells were incubated for 5 min with rHagB, HBD3 + rHagB (10:1 molar ratio), HBD3 or 0.1 M phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) (pH 7.2) and were then rapidly fixed and processed for confocal microscopy and ultramicrotomy. rHagB and HBD3 could be detected with primary monoclonal mouse antibody to rHagB (MoAb 1858) or polyclonal rabbit antibody to HBD3 (P241) and secondary fluorescent-labelled anti-mouse or anti-rabbit antibodies (confocal microscopy) or protein A–colloidal gold (immunoelectron microscopy). In cells incubated with rHagB only, fluorescence and protein A–colloidal gold were seen at the cell surface and throughout the cytoplasm. In cells incubated with HBD3 + rHagB, fluorescence was observed only at the cell surface in a ‘string of pearls’ configuration. Overall, these results suggest that HBD3 binding to rHagB alters, but does not inhibit, the binding of rHagB to human myeloid dendritic cells.