Publication Spotlight: Cytokine Expression in HepG2 Cells and the Effects of Budesonide
Another exciting article from The Journal of Advanced Technological Education (J ATE) Volume 3: Issue 2. Authors Cubit, Rojas, Kulikowski, Martinez, and Prabhakar (Frederick Community College) discuss a synthetic glucocorticoid, budesonide and its potential as an anti-inflammatory for treatment of a number of illnesses.
Inflammation has been shown to be involved in asthma, ulcerative colitis, as well as the development of cancer and even a patient's response to disease treatments. This means that successful treatment of inflammation an important goal in health research. Although glucocorticoids have been shown to be effective against inflammation, they can have adverse effects with prolonged use. Budesonide has been shown to be effective against inflammation while having fewer adverse effects, prompting the authors to examine it in the context of liver cancer. Liver cancer cells (HepG2) were treated with Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) to induce inflammation, and then levels of marker cytokines were measured before and after the application of budesonide.
Overall, the study did not find a clear connection between the application of budesonide and suppression of cytokines that had been induced by LPS. The authors reviewed the various reasons why their results may not corroborate those of previous studies, including the possibility that HepG2 cells alone are not the best model to mimic a physiological state and therefore the experiments could be repeated with a co-culture of HepG2 and primary immune cells.
What is particularly remarkable about this paper is that the student who initiated the research actually has ulcerative colitis and takes budesonide to treat his disease. Research can hold extra meaning and be especially rewarding when it is so personal! In addition, this article shows that you may have to learn from data that do not give a straight-forward answer, but that it is still possible to gain insight even when that happens. The data that are generated are only part of the knowledge discovered!
This work was supported by the RCN-UBE: Cell Biology Education Consortium (CBEC) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under award #1827066.