Background: The epithelial cells of the airway mucosa, as the initiating factors of airway inflammation, regulate the occurrence of innate and acquired immune responses. According to the same airway theory and the latest research results on pericytes in the lower respiratory tract, there may also be interactions or information transmission between the epithelial cells and pericytes of the airway mucosa in the upper respiratory tract. Methods: In this study, primary mucosal epithelial cells of nasal polyps(NP) were first isolated and cultured to establish a stimulation system of house dust mite (HDM) extract. Then, a co-culture system of primary mucosal epithelial cells of NP and human microvascular pericytes was established using Transwell chambers. The migration of pericytes in each group after co-culture was determined by using the plate scratch test. Transcriptomics was applied to study the differences in gene expression of pericytes in each group after co-culture. The expression of cytokines and chemokines in the culture supernatants of each group was detected by ELISA. Finally, the protein expression of the related pathways after co-culture was detected by the WB method. Results: The results of this study show that the pericytes migration in the eosinophilic co-culture group is significantly higher than that in the other groups. Compared with the model group, the co-culture group increased the cell viability of human nasal mucosal epithelial cells stimulated by HDM. The migration ability of human nasal mucosal epithelial cells decreased after HDM stimulation, and the migration ability was restored after co-culture. The results indicated that in the co-culture group, POSTN, VCAM-1 and CCL-5 expressed by pericytes were the most numerous. The WB detection results revealed that the PDGF pathway in pericytes was activated, and the expressions of related proteins all changed accordingly. Conclusions: This study indicates that in the co-culture model of mucosal epithelial cells of NP and pericytes, the stimulated epithelial cells can upregulate the expression of factors such as POSTN, VCAM-1 and CCL-5 in pericytes. There exists a PDGF/PI3K/AKT/NF-κB signaling pathway between mucosal epithelial cells of NP and pericytes.
Cui et al. (Thu,) studied this question.