Science Bite (3 min Oral Presentation) Lorne Infection and Immunity 2019

Necroptosis directly induces full-length bioactive IL-33 release (#72)

Inbar Shlomovitz 1 , Ziv Erlich 1 , Mary Speir 2 , Sefi Zargarian 1 , Noam Baram 1 , Liat Edry-Botzer 1 , Ariel Munitz 1 , Ben A. Croker 2 , Mordechay Gerlic 1
  1. Clinical Microbiology and Immunology, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
  2. Division of Hematology/Oncology, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

IL-33 is a pro-inflammatory cytokine that plays a significant role in inflammatory diseases by activating immune cells to induce type 2 immune responses upon its release. Although IL-33 is known to be released during tissue damage, its exact release mechanism is not yet fully understood. Previously, we have shown that cleaved IL-33 can be detected in the plasma and epithelium of Ripk1-/- neonates, which succumb to systemic inflammation driven by spontaneous receptor-interacting protein kinase-3 (RIPK3)-dependent necroptotic cell death, shortly after birth1. Thus, we hypothesized that necroptosis, a RIPK3/ mixed lineage kinase-like protein (MLKL)-dependent, caspase-independent cell death pathway controls IL-33 release. Here, we show that necroptosis directly induces the release of nuclear IL-33 in its full-length form. Unlike the necroptosis executioner protein, MLKL, which was released in its active phosphorylated form in extracellular vesicles, IL-33 was released directly into the supernatant. Importantly, full-length IL-33 released in response to necroptosis was found to be bioactive, as it was able to activate both basophils and eosinophils. In support, HSV-1 infection, a known physiologically-relevant inducer of necroptotic cell death, also promoted full-length IL-33 release in vitro. Finally, the human and murine necroptosis inhibitor, GW806742X, blocked necroptosis and IL-33 release in vitro and reduced eosinophilia in Aspergillus fumigatus extract-induced asthma in vivo, an allergic inflammation model that is highly dependent on IL-33. Collectively, these data establish for the first-time that necroptosis functions to directly release IL-33, a finding that may have major implications in type 2 immune responses.

  1. Rickard, J. A. et al. RIPK1 regulates RIPK3-MLKL-driven systemic inflammation and emergency hematopoiesis. Cell 157, 1175–88 (2014).