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Published August 2016 | Published + Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

Deficiency of Nuclear Factor-κB c-Rel Accelerates the Development of Autoimmune Diabetes in NOD Mice

Abstract

The nuclear factor-κB protein c-Rel plays a critical role in controlling autoimmunity. c-Rel–deficient mice are resistant to streptozotocin-induced diabetes, a drug-induced model of autoimmune diabetes. We generated c-Rel–deficient NOD mice to examine the role of c-Rel in the development of spontaneous autoimmune diabetes. We found that both CD4^+ and CD8^+ T cells from c-Rel–deficient NOD mice showed significantly decreased T-cell receptor–induced IL-2, IFN-γ, and GM-CSF expression. Despite compromised T-cell function, c-Rel deficiency dramatically accelerated insulitis and hyperglycemia in NOD mice along with a substantial reduction in T-regulatory (Treg) cell numbers. Supplementation of isogenic c-Rel–competent Treg cells from prediabetic NOD mice reversed the accelerated diabetes development in c-Rel–deficient NOD mice. The results suggest that c-Rel–dependent Treg cell function is critical in suppressing early-onset autoimmune diabetogenesis in NOD mice. This study provides a novel natural system to study autoimmune diabetes pathogenesis and reveals a previously unknown c-Rel–dependent mechanistic difference between chemically induced and spontaneous diabetogenesis. The study also reveals a unique protective role of c-Rel in autoimmune diabetes, which is distinct from other T-cell–dependent autoimmune diseases such as arthritis and experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, where c-Rel promotes autoimmunity.

Additional Information

© 2016 American Diabetes Association. Received 24 November 2015 and accepted 15 May 2016. The authors thank Hsiou-Chi Liou, Cornell University, for providing c-Rel knockout mice; Diane Mathis and Christophe Benoist, Harvard Medical School, for providing FOXP3-IRES-GFP mice; the California Institute of Technology and Case Western Reserve University animal facilities; Ni Feng, California Institute of Technology, for flow cytometry; and Daniel Kahn and Jevgenij Raskatov, California Institute of Technology, and Timothy Kern, Case Western Reserve University, for insightful discussions. This work was initially supported by National Institute of General Medical Sciences grant 2R01-GM-039458 to D.B. and later by Mizutani Foundation for Glycoscience grant 120022, the Clinical and Translational Science Collaborative of Cleveland, grant CTSC UL1-TR-000439 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases grant 1R01-AI-116730-01A1 to P.R. M.A.Y. was supported by National Institutes of Health grant AI-64590. J.A.T. was supported by an American Association of Immunologists (AAI) Careers in Immunology Fellowship to P.R. No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported. Author Contributions: P.R. contributed to the study conception and design, data research, and writing of the manuscript. M.A.Y. contributed to the data research, discussion, and editing of the manuscript. J.A.T., D.M., and R.P. contributed to the data research. D.B. contributed to the data interpretation, discussion, and review and editing of the manuscript. P.R. is the guarantor of this work and, as such, had full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

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Published - Ramakrishnan_2016p2367.pdf

Supplemental Material - DB151607SupplementaryData.pdf

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August 20, 2023
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