Tag Archive for: chemical

Evaluation of the GARD assay in a blind Cosmetics Europe study

ALTEX Online first published February 17, 2017 https://doi.org/10.14573/altex.1701121

Johansson H., Gradin R., Forreryd A., Agemark M., Zeller K., Johansson A., Larne O., van Vliet E.,  Borrebaeck C., Lindstedt M.,

Summary

Chemical hypersensitivity is an immunological response towards foreign substances, commonly referred to as sensitizers, which gives rise primarily to the clinical symptoms known as allergic contact dermatitis. For the purpose of mitigating risks associated with consumer products, chemicals are screened for sensitizing effects. Historically, such predictive screenings have been performed using animal models. However, due to industrial and regulatory demand, animal models for the purpose of sensitization assessment are being replaced by animalfree testing methods, a global trend that is spreading across industries and market segments. To meet this demand, the Genomic Allergen Rapid Detection (GARD) assay was developed. GARD is a novel, cell-based assay that utilizes the innate recognition of xenobiotic substances by dendritic cells, as measured by a multivariate readout of genomic biomarkers. Following cellular stimulation, chemicals are classified as sensitizers or non-sensitizers based on induced transcriptional profiles. Recently, a number of animal-free methods were comparatively evaluated by Cosmetic Europe, using a coherent and blinded test panel of reference chemicals with human and local lymph node assay data, comprising a wide range of sensitizers and non-sensitizers. In this paper, the outcome of the GARD assay is presented. It was demonstrated that GARD is a highly functional assay with a predictive performance of 83% in this Cosmetics Europe dataset. The average accumulated predictive accuracy of GARD across independent datasets was 86%, for skin sensitization hazard. Keywords: GARD, sensitization, in vitro, predictive accuracy, alternative methods

Link to article e-pub ahead of print

 

Functional and transcriptional profiling of MUTZ-3, a myeloid cell line acting as a model for dendritic cells

Immunology. 2006 Feb; 117(2): 156–166.

Larsson K., Lindstedt M., Borrebaeck C.A.K.

ABSTRACT

The incidence of allergy is steadily increasing, but the molecular mechanisms involved in the allergic immune response are still not fully understood. In particular, further investigations focusing on dendritic cells, which are central in orchestrating the immune response, are needed. The objective of this study was to investigate the ability of myeloid leukaemia-derived cell lines, such as KG-1, THP-1 and MUTZ-3, to serve as in vitro models for dendritic cells. The ability of these cell lines to mature into functional dendritic cells, expressing costimulatory molecules, was assessed by functional and transcriptional profiling and compared with that of monocyte-derived dendritic cells, which are now used as a standard source of dendritic cells. High-density microarray analysis was utilized to study the transcriptional activity and kinetics of activation of the differentiated MUTZ-3 cell line, in response to a cocktail of inflammatory cytokines. The data obtained clearly demonstrate that MUTZ-3 cells have the ability to induce antigen-independent proliferation in CD4+CD45RA+ T cells, whereas KG-1 and THP-1 only induced a marginal response. Furthermore, MUTZ-3 displayed the phenotypic and transcriptional profiles of immature dendritic cells, after differentiation with granulocyte–macrophage colony-stimulating factor and interleukin-4. Upon activation with inflammatory cytokines, MUTZ-3 matured phenotypically and exhibited a gene induction similar to that of monocyte-derived dendritic cells. This delineation of the cellular and transcriptional activity of MUTZ-3, in response to maturational stimuli, demonstrates the significance of this cell line as a model for functional studies of inflammatory responses.

Keywords: dendritic cells, myeloid cell line, high-density microarray, inflammation, allergy
Article online