Cytokines mediate many host responses to bacterial infections. We determined the inflammatory activities of five cytokines in the central nervous system: TNF-alpha, IL-1 alpha, IL-1 beta, macrophage inflammatory protein 1 (MIP-1), and macrophage inflammatory protein 2 (MIP-2). Using a rabbit model of meningeal inflammation, each cytokine (except IL-1 beta) induced enhanced blood brain barrier permeability, leukocytosis in cerebrospinal fluid, and brain edema. Homologous antibodies to each mediator inhibited leukocytosis and brain edema, and moderately decreased blood brain barrier permeability. In rabbits treated with anti-CD-18 antibody to render neutrophils dysfunctional for adhesion, each cytokine studied lost the ability to cause leukocytosis and brain edema. After intracisternal challenge with pneumococci, antibodies to TNF or IL-1 prevented inflammation, while anti-MIP-1 or anti-MIP-2 caused only a 2-h delay in the onset of inflammation. We suggest these cytokines have multiple inflammatory activities in the central nervous system and contribute to tissue damage during pneumococcal meningitis.

We tested if specific inhibition of recruitment of leukocytes across the blood brain barrier from the vascular compartment to the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) space reduced tissue damage and improved the outcome of infection in a rabbit model of experimental meningitis. The CD11/CD18 complex of receptors on leukocytes promotes adhesion of these cells to endothelia, a process required for egress of cells into the extravascular space. Intravenous injection of the anti-CD18 mAb IB4 effectively blocked the development of leukocytosis in the CSF of animals challenged intracisternally with living bacteria, bacterial endotoxin, or bacterial cell wall. This effect was associated with protection from blood brain barrier injury as measured by exclusion of serum proteins from CSF in mAb-treated animals. The densities of bacteria in CSF and the degrees of bacterial killing due to ampicillin were not affected by the antibody. Animals receiving the antibody experienced a delay in the development of bacteremia and a significantly reduced inflammatory response during ampicillin-induced bacterial killing. Therapy with mAb IB4 prevented development of brain edema and death in animals challenged with lethal doses of Streptococcus pneumoniae. These studies indicate that the major mechanism of leukocyte migration across the blood brain barrier involves the CD11/CD18 receptors and that inflammatory leukocytes recruited by this mechanism are a major cause of blood brain barrier injury and cerebral edema during meningitis.

Nuclear hormone receptors are the largest known family of eukaryotic transcription factors and serve as critical effectors of vertebrate homeostasis, growth, and differentiation. The precise transcriptional response mediated by a given nuclear hormone receptor is dictated by hormone, promoter, and cellular context, and many nuclear hormone receptors function bimodally as both transcriptional activators and repressors. We report here the identification of a family of proteins, denoted TRACs (T3 receptor-associating cofactors), which physically interact with nuclear hormone receptors and can modulate the transcriptional properties of these receptors. TRACs associate with retinoic acid, retinoid X, and thyroid hormone receptors, as well as the PML-RAR alpha and v-Erb A oncoproteins. Certain TRAC forms attenuate target gene expression and may serve as corepressors, whereas other TRAC family members appear to counteract these effects. We suggest that TRACs and related cofactors may participate in dictating the pleiotropic transcriptional capacities of the nuclear hormone receptors.

Aromatase inhibitors (AI) are a standard-of-care treatment for postmenopausal, estrogen receptor-positive breast cancers. Although tumor recurrence on AI therapy occurs, the mechanisms underlying acquired resistance to AIs remain unknown. In this study, we examined a cohort of endocrine-treated breast cancer patients and used a cell line model of resistance to the AI letrozole. In patients treated with a first-line AI, hormone receptor switching between primary and resistant tumors was a common feature of disease recurrence. Resistant cells exhibited a switch from steroid-responsive growth to growth factor-responsive and endocrine-independent growth, which was accompanied by the development of a more migratory and disorganized phenotype. Both the resistant cells and tumors from AI-resistant patients showed high expression of the steroid receptor coactivator SRC-1. Direct interactions between SRC-1 and the transcription factor Ets2 regulated Myc and MMP9. SRC-1 was required for the aggressive and motile phenotype of AI-resistant cells. Interestingly, SRC-1 expression in primary and/or recurrent tumors was associated with a reduction in disease-free survival in treated patients. Moreover, there was a significant association between SRC-1 and Ets2 in the recurrent tissue compared with the matched primary tumor. Together, our findings elucidate a mechanism of AI-specific metastatic progression in which interactions between SRC-1 and Ets2 promote dedifferentiation and migration in hormone-dependent breast cancer. Cancer Res; 72(2); 548-59. Ó2011 AACR.

The amp operon, which is located on the Escherichia coli chromosome, modulates the induction of plasmid-borne beta-lactamase genes by extracellular beta-lactam antibiotics. This suggests that the gene products AmpD and AmpE may function in the transduction of external signals. beta-Lactam antibiotics are analogs of cell wall components that can be released during cell wall morphogenesis of enterobacteria. The amp operon was studied to determine its importance in signal transduction during cell wall morphogenesis. The peptidoglycan compositions of amp mutants were determined by high-performance liquid chromatography and fast atom bombardment mass spectrometry. When a chromosomal or plasmid-borne copy of ampD was present, the amount of pentapeptide-containing muropeptides in the cell wall increased upon addition of the cell wall constituent diaminopimelic acid to the growth medium. These results suggest that beta-lactamase induction and modulation of the composition of the cell wall share elements of a regulatory circuit that involves AmpD. Escherichia coli requires AmpD to respond to extracellular signaling amino acids, such as diaminopimelic acid, and this signal transduction system may regulate peptidoglycan composition in response to cell wall turnover products.

Eradication of Bordetella pertussis from the respiratory tract occurs slowly even when bactericidal antibiotics are used. The rate of killing of B. pertussis was found to be proportional to growth rate: virulent, slowly growing strains were killed over days, while rapidly growing strains (either avirulent or virulent modulated by growth conditions to avirulent) were killed over hours. Minimum inhibitory concentrations and binding of antibiotics to membrane targets were equivalent in virulent and avirulent cells, suggesting differences in antibiotic response might reflect differences in activities of the autolytic cascade. This was supported by the finding that cell wall degradation was less than 40% per day in virulent strains and greater than 70% per day in avirulent strains. Penem antibiotics, known to rapidly kill even slowly growing bacteria, demonstrated a more-than-twofold greater rate of killing of slowly growing virulent strains compared with ampicillin or erythromycin. This suggests the potential for improved therapeutic efficacy in vivo. Thus, the vir locus, which determines phase transition in B. pertussis, is apparently the first example of a sensor-transducer system controlling phenotypic tolerance and antibiotic-induced autolytic activity.

We report here a characterization of the thyroid hormone receptors (T3Rs), retinoic acid receptors (RARs), and retinoid X receptors (RXRs) by reconstituting their actions in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. S. pombe provide a well defined and readily manipulated genetic background devoid of known endogenous nuclear hormone receptors. All the receptors tested, when introduced exogenously into S. pombe, induced high levels of reporter gene activation in response to physiological concentrations of hormone ligand. In these properties, the S. pombe system exhibits significant advantages over the previously employed Saccharomyces cerevisiae system. Use of the S. pombe system permitted the elucidation of previously undescribed differences in the DNA sequence recognition properties of different isoforms of the RXR and RARs, and the identification of apparently novel forms of response element for RXRs and RARs. Intriguingly, the v-erb A allele of T3R, a transcriptional repressor in vertebrate cells, acts as a transcriptional activator both in S. cerevisiae and in the evolutionarily highly divergent S. pombe, underscoring the importance of cellular factors in the regulation of receptor transcriptional activity.

639Incubation of pneumococci with D-alanine-containing peptides naturally occurring in peptidoglycan protected cells against lysis and killing by p-lactam antibiotics near MIC. Such peptides caused decreased binding of the antibiotic to penicillin-binding proteins (PBPs), primarily PBP 2B. This provides direct evidence in vivo for the hypothesis that P-lactams act as substrate analogues and identifies PBP 2B as a killing target in pneumococci.