Abstract
Opportunistic fungal infections are a leading cause of death among immune-compromised patients, and there is a pressing need to develop new antifungal therapeutic agents because of toxicity and resistance to the antifungal drugs currently in use. Although C-type lectin receptor– and Toll-like receptor–induced signaling pathways are key activators of host antifungal immunity, little is known about the mechanisms that negatively regulate host immune responses to a fungal infection. Here we found that JNK1 activation suppresses antifungal immunity in mice. We showed that JNK1-deficient mice had a significantly higher survival rate than wild-type control mice in response to Candida albicans infection, and the expression of JNK1 in hematopoietic innate immune cells was critical for this effect. JNK1 deficiency leads to significantly higher induction of CD23, a novel C-type lectin receptor, through NFATc1-mediated regulation of the CD23 gene promoter. Blocking either CD23 upregulation or CD23-dependent nitric oxide production eliminated the enhanced antifungal response found in JNK1-deficient mice. Notably, JNK inhibitors exerted potent antifungal therapeutic effects in both mouse and human cells infected with C. albicans, indicating that JNK1 may be a therapeutic target for treating fungal infection.
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Acknowledgements
We thank X. Hu, Y. Shang and L. Ni for helpful discussion. We thank X. Xu, L. Mu, S. Xie and T. Xia for technical assistance. We thank D.C. Lin for editing the English in this manuscript. This work was partially supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81502460 and 31670904 to X.Z., 91542107 and 81630058 to X.L., 81571611 to X.J.) and National Institutes of Health (AI116722 to X.L.).
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X.Z. and Y.G. performed most of the experiments. C.J. and T.L. performed some of the mouse experiments. Q.C. and S.Z. performed some of the in vitro experiments. B.Z. analyzed the RNA–seq data and helped prepare the figures. X.J., M.-C.H. and C.D. provided key reagents and insightful discussion. X.L. and X.Z. conceived the project and wrote the manuscript.
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Zhao, X., Guo, Y., Jiang, C. et al. JNK1 negatively controls antifungal innate immunity by suppressing CD23 expression. Nat Med 23, 337–346 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.4260
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.4260
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