Exposure of cystic fibrosis bronchial epithelial cells (CFBE 41 o-) to Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA01) biofilms

In the clinical setting, mutations in the CFTR gene enhance the inflammatory response to P. aeruginosa (PA01) infection, but measurements of the inflammatory response to pathogen stimulation by isolated airway epithelia can yield variable results. In this series, we exposed CFBE41o- cells over-expressing F508/F508 CFTR and CFBE41o- cells rescued with wt-CFTR to P. aeruginosa biofilms. P. aeruginosa elicited a more robust increase in cytokine and chemokine expression (e.g., IL-8, CXCL2, CXCL3, CXCR4 and TNF-) in CFBE-wt-CFTR cells compared to CFBE-F508-CFTR cells. These results demonstrate that CFBE41o- cells complemented with wt-CFTR mount a more robust inflammatory response to P. aeruginosa than CFBE41o- F508/F508-CFTR cells.

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Hampton TH, Ballok AE, Bomberger JM, Rutkowski MR, Barnaby R, Coutermarsh B, Conejo-Garcia JR, O'Toole GA, Stanton BA