The expanding role of immunopharmacology: IUPHAR Review 16

High-throughput imaging of mRNA at the single-cell level in human primary immune cells

Measurement of gene expression at the single-cell level has advanced the study of transcriptional regulation programs in healthy and disease states. In particular, single-cell approaches have shed light on the high level of transcriptional heterogeneity of individual cells, both at baseline and in response to experimental or environmental perturbations. We have developed a method for high-content imaging (HCI)-based quantification of relative changes in transcript abundance at the single-cell level in human primary immune cells and have validated its performance under multiple experimental conditions to demonstrate its general applicability. This method, named hcHCR, combines the sensitivity of the hybridization chain reaction (HCR) for the visualization of RNA in single cells, with the speed, scalability, and reproducibility of HCI. We first tested eight cell attachment substrates for short-term culture of primary human B cells, T cells, monocytes, or neutrophils. We then miniaturized HCR in 384-well format and documented the ability of the method to detect changes in transcript abundance at the single-cell level in thousands of cells for each experimental condition by HCI. Furthermore, we demonstrated the feasibility of multiplexing gene expression measurements by simultaneously assaying the abundance of three transcripts per cell at baseline and in response to an experimental stimulus. Finally, we tested the robustness of the assay to technical and biological variation. We anticipate that hcHCR will be suitable for low- to medium-throughput chemical or functional genomics screens in primary human cells, with the possibility of performing screens on cells obtained from patients with a specific disease.

Guide to Immunopharmacology: a database to boost immunology education, research and therapy

In the era of big data, the establishment of a free database, containing all the immune drug targets and associated cell types, is of great value. To this aim, the Guide to Immunopharmacology has been created in a joint effort between the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology (IUPHAR) and the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS). Here we highlight the structure and content of the database, which includes up‐to‐date quantitative information on the fundamental science underlying each immune target. A set of practical examples and tools for data mining are summarized to support immune research into drug discovery and therapeutics.

Immunological effects of Chondrus armatus carrageenans and their low molecular weight degradation products

Ability of high molecular weight (HMW) κ- and λ-carrageenans of the red marine algae Chondrus armatus and their low molecular weight degradation products (LMWDPs) (0.7-20 and 10-170 kDa respectively) to influence functional properties (motility and phagocytosis) of murine peritoneal macrophages was assessed in this study as an in vitro and a weeklong feeding experiment. We demonstrated that, with an exception of one, all carrageenan samples at 100 μg/ml increased cellular motility and dose-dependently decreased phagocytic activity; LMWDPs of λ-carrageenan suppressed motility and had no effect on phagocytosis. Oral administration of all the carrageenan samples at 100 μg/kg/day for 7 days to mice had no effect on their clinical appearance, body weight, weight of their liver, spleen or thymus or development of noticeable changes to their inner organs. All samples induced a shift of the cell composition of the peritoneal cavity towards macrophages. Consumption of LMWDPs of κ-carrageenan resulted in development of leukopenia, however, no changes to relative WBC count were introduced by either of the samples. All samples decreased murine peritoneal macrophages phagocytic activity, with λ-samples possessing higher efficacy than their κ-counterparts; all LMWDPs stimulated peritoneal macrophages motility, with κ-samples possessing higher efficacy than their λ-counterparts In conclusion, we have shown that κ- and λ-carrageenans of the C. armatus and their LMWDPs suppress phagocytotic activity of peritoneal macrophages under both in vitro and in vivo conditions. This allows them to be viewed as pharmacologically active substances andpropagates the need for their further investigation as such.

The IUPHAR Guide to Immunopharmacology: connecting immunology and pharmacology

Given the critical role that the immune system plays in a multitude of diseases, having a clear understanding of the pharmacology of the immune system is crucial to new drug discovery and development. Here we describe the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology (IUPHAR) Guide to Immunopharmacology (GtoImmuPdb), which connects expert-curated pharmacology with key immunological concepts and aims to put pharmacological data into the hands of immunologists. In the pursuit of new therapeutics, pharmacological databases are a vital resource to researchers through providing accurate information on the fundamental science underlying drug action. This extension to the existing IUPHAR/British Pharmacological Society Guide to Pharmacology supports research into the development of drugs targeted at modulating immune, inflammatory or infectious components of disease. To provide a deeper context for how the resource can support research we show data in GtoImmuPdb relating to a case study on the targeting of vascular inflammation.

Enigmatic Histamine Receptor H4 for Potential Treatment of Multiple Inflammatory, Autoimmune, and Related Diseases

The histamine H4 receptor, belonging to the family of G-protein coupled receptors, is an increasingly attractive drug target. It plays an indispensable role in many cellular pathways, and numerous H4R ligands are being studied for the treatment of several inflammatory, allergic, and autoimmune disorders, including pulmonary fibrosis. Activation of H4R is involved in cytokine production and mediates mast cell activation and eosinophil chemotaxis. The importance of this receptor has also been shown in inflammatory models: peritonitis, respiratory tract inflammation, colitis, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis. Recent studies suggest that H4R acts as a modulator in cancer, neuropathic pain, vestibular disorders, and type-2 diabetes, however, its role is still not fully understood.

Intravital multiphoton microscopy as a novel tool in the field of immunopharmacology

Intravital microscopy with multiphoton excitation is a recently developed optical imaging technique for deep tissue imaging without fixation or sectioning, which permits examination of fundamental concepts regarding the dynamic nature of cells under physiological and pathological conditions in living animals. This novel technique also offers exciting opportunities for pharmacological research by providing new platforms for the study of cellular dynamics in response to drugs in vivo. Moreover, fluorescent chemical probes for functional or molecular analysis in single cells in vivo play important roles in pharmacology. For example, we have recently revealed the pharmacodynamic actions of different biological agents for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in vivo by directly visualizing drug-induced cellular behaviors and functions of osteoclasts on bone surfaces. This review focuses on the principles and advantages of intravital imaging for the dissection of pharmacological mechanisms, and discusses how such imaging can contribute to the drug development process, introducing recent trials that evaluated the in vivo pharmacological effects of various agents.

Accessing Expert-Curated Pharmacological Data in the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY

The IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY is an expert-curated, open-access database of information on drug targets and the substances that act on them. This unit describes the procedures for searching and downloading ligand-target binding data and for finding detailed annotations and the most relevant literature. The database includes concise overviews of the properties of 1,700 data-supported human drug targets and related proteins, divided into families, and 9,000 small molecule and peptide experimental ligands and approved drugs that bind to those targets. More detailed descriptions of pharmacology, function, and pathophysiology are provided for a subset of important targets. The information is reviewed regularly by expert subcommittees of the IUPHAR Committee on Receptor Nomenclature and Drug Classification. A new immunopharmacology portal has recently been added, drawing together data on immunological targets, ligands, cell types, processes and diseases. The data are available for download and can be accessed computationally via Web services. © 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Use of biologics during pregnancy and risk of serious infections in the mother and baby: a Canadian population-based cohort study

OBJECTIVES

To investigate the association between exposure to biologics during pregnancy and serious infections in mothers and infants.

DESIGN

Retrospective cohort study.

SETTING

Population-based.

PARTICIPANTS

Women with one or more autoimmune diseases identified by International Classification of Diseases 9th/10th revision codes in healthcare administrative databases in British Columbia, Canada, who had pregnancies ending in a live or stillbirth between 1 January 2002 and 31 December 2012. Women were defined as exposed if they had at least one biologic prescription during pregnancy, and infants born to these women were considered exposed in utero. Disease-matched women with no biologics prescriptions during pregnancy, and their infants, comprised the unexposed groups.

PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURES

Serious infections requiring hospitalisation.

RESULTS

Over the 10-year study period, there were 6218 women (8607 pregnancies) who had an autoimmune disease diagnosis, of which 90 women were exposed to biologics during pregnancy, with 100 babies born to these women. Among women exposed to biologics during pregnancy, occurrence of serious postpartum infections were low, ranging from 0% to 5%, depending on concomitant exposures to immunosuppressants. In multivariable models using logistic regression, the OR for the association of biologics exposure with serious maternal postpartum infections was 0.79 (95% CI 0.24 to 2.54). In infants exposed to biologics in utero, occurrence of serious infections during the first year of life ranged from 0% to 7%, depending on concomitant exposures to immunosuppressants in utero. Multivariable models showed no association between biologics exposure in utero and serious infant infections (OR 0.56, 95% CI 0.17 to 1.81).

CONCLUSIONS

These population-based data suggest that the use of biologics by women with autoimmune diseases during pregnancy is not associated with an increased risk of serious infections in mothers, during post partum or in infants during the first year of life.

Human eosinophils and mast cells: Birds of a feather flock together

While the origin of the phrase "birds of a feather flock together" is unclear, it has been in use for centuries and is typically employed to describe the phenomenon that people with similar tastes or interests tend to seek each other out and congregate together. In this review, we have co-opted this phrase to compare innate immune cells of related origin, the eosinophil and mast cell, because they very often accumulate together in tissue sites under both homeostatic and inflammatory conditions. To highlight overlapping yet distinct features, their hematopoietic development, cell surface phenotype, mediator release profiles and roles in diseases have been compared and contrasted. What emerges is a sense that these two cell types often interact with each other and their tissue environment to provide synergistic contributions to a variety of normal and pathologic immune responses.

Histamine pharmacology: from Sir Henry Dale to the 21st century

Histamine has been one of the most studied substances in medicine, playing a major role in diverse (patho)physiological processes. It elicits its multifaceted modulatory functions by activating four types of GPCRs, designated as H_1-4 . Despite the heterogeneity and the complexity of histamine receptor pharmacology, many discoveries over the past 100 years resulted in the development of H₁ antihistamines and H₂ -targeting 'blockbuster' therapeutics for the management of allergies and gastrointestinal disorders respectively. Recently, a first-in-class H₃ inverse agonist was approved for the treatment of narcolepsy, whereas H₄ antagonists are under clinical evaluation for their potential therapeutic exploitation in immune-related diseases. This review critically presents the past successes and drawbacks in histamine research, complemented by the modern conceptual innovations in molecular and receptor pharmacology. It targets both young and experienced researchers in an ongoing effort to stimulate novel insights for the dissection of the translational potential of histamine pharmacology. LINKED ARTICLES: This article is part of a themed section on New Uses for 21st Century. To view the other articles in this section visit http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bph.v177.3/issuetoc.

The IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY in 2018: updates and expansion to encompass the new guide to IMMUNOPHARMACOLOGY

The IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY (GtoPdb, www.guidetopharmacology.org) and its precursor IUPHAR-DB, have captured expert-curated interactions between targets and ligands from selected papers in pharmacology and drug discovery since 2003. This resource continues to be developed in conjunction with the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology (IUPHAR) and the British Pharmacological Society (BPS). As previously described, our unique model of content selection and quality control is based on 96 target-class subcommittees comprising 512 scientists collaborating with in-house curators. This update describes content expansion, new features and interoperability improvements introduced in the 10 releases since August 2015. Our relationship matrix now describes ∼9000 ligands, ∼15 000 binding constants, ∼6000 papers and ∼1700 human proteins. As an important addition, we also introduce our newly funded project for the Guide to IMMUNOPHARMACOLOGY (GtoImmuPdb, www.guidetoimmunopharmacology.org). This has been 'forked' from the well-established GtoPdb data model and expanded into new types of data related to the immune system and inflammatory processes. This includes new ligands, targets, pathways, cell types and diseases for which we are recruiting new IUPHAR expert committees. Designed as an immunopharmacological gateway, it also has an emphasis on potential therapeutic interventions.

Immunology proves a great success for treating systemic autoimmune diseases - a perspective on immunopharmacology: IUPHAR Review 23

Recent advances in the bioengineering of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have revolutionized the treatment of several immunological and rheumatic diseases. mAbs exhibit high specificity and affinity, and are very effective targeting agents, associated with minimal off-target adverse effects. Of several relevant immunological diseases, rheumatoid arthritis was the condition initially treated with mAbs, with great success. Currently, many immunological disorders are targeted and successfully treated using such novel approaches; these include inflammatory bowel diseases, multiple sclerosis, lupus and psoriasis. Today, the efforts of researchers in basic immunology (with a long history) have borne fruit; bioengineered mAbs are employed in clinical practice. In this brief review, I will describe the current and emerging therapeutic mAbs and molecular targeted agents, and discuss the future of the field, especially from the viewpoint of pharmacology.

Natural Products as Sources of New Drugs from 1981 to 2014

This contribution is a completely updated and expanded version of the four prior analogous reviews that were published in this journal in 1997, 2003, 2007, and 2012. In the case of all approved therapeutic agents, the time frame has been extended to cover the 34 years from January 1, 1981, to December 31, 2014, for all diseases worldwide, and from 1950 (earliest so far identified) to December 2014 for all approved antitumor drugs worldwide. As mentioned in the 2012 review, we have continued to utilize our secondary subdivision of a "natural product mimic", or "NM", to join the original primary divisions and the designation "natural product botanical", or "NB", to cover those botanical "defined mixtures" now recognized as drug entities by the U.S. FDA (and similar organizations). From the data presented in this review, the utilization of natural products and/or their novel structures, in order to discover and develop the final drug entity, is still alive and well. For example, in the area of cancer, over the time frame from around the 1940s to the end of 2014, of the 175 small molecules approved, 131, or 75%, are other than "S" (synthetic), with 85, or 49%, actually being either natural products or directly derived therefrom. In other areas, the influence of natural product structures is quite marked, with, as expected from prior information, the anti-infective area being dependent on natural products and their structures. We wish to draw the attention of readers to the rapidly evolving recognition that a significant number of natural product drugs/leads are actually produced by microbes and/or microbial interactions with the "host from whence it was isolated", and therefore it is considered that this area of natural product research should be expanded significantly.