Tie-2 expressing monocytes (TEMs) were identified to be a subset of monocytes that was potent inducer of tumor angiogenesis in various types of cancer. On the other hand, monocytes and macrophages are crucially involved in the innate immune response, but the function of TEMs in this process is not well understood. Therefore, we studied the role of Tie-2 in regulating the inflammatory response initiated by lipopolysaccharide in murine macrophages. First, we observed that a small percentage of bone marrow-derived macrophages express Tie-2. Furthermore, we observed that Tie-2 ligands were able to induce phosphorylation of signalling proteins in macrophages. However, we found that Tie-2 ligands were not able to regulate pro-inflammatory cytokine secretion, nor were the ligands able to prevent apoptosis induced by lipopolysaccharide in macrophages. These results suggest that contrary to current evidence in the literature, Tie-2 ligands may not play a role in modulating the pro-inflammatory response in TEMs.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/44010 |
| Date | 18 March 2014 |
| Creators | Chung, Alexandra Bernice |
| Contributors | Dumont, Daniel Joseph |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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