Transcriptional and metabolomic regulation of IL-10 in pulmonary ILC2s

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Abstract ILC2s are the dominant innate lymphoid cell population in the lungs at steady state and their release of type-2 cytokines is a central driver in responding eosinophil infiltration, increased airway hyperreactivity and associated lung tissue injury. Previously, our laboratory identified a subset of ILC2s (ILC210s) that actively produce and secrete IL-10, an anti-inflammatory cytokine with the ability to ameliorate allergic lung inflammation signaling (J Allergy Clin Immunol., 2020). Importantly, these results have been confirmed by other groups in a variety of allergic disease models (J Exp Med., 2020, Immunity, 2021). The proposed research plan is motivated by recent preliminary observations demonstrating that key molecular and transcriptional requirements may be required for the induction of IL-10, with the potential for targeted modulation. SA1 is intended to explore the regulation of transcription factors for the induction of IL-10. We propose a series of experiments in acute and chronic models of allergic airway inflammation to assess the involvement of key transcription factors cMaf and Blimp-1 first by expansive, cutting-edge chromatin sequencing methods, and next by retroviral induction and knock-out mouse models. In SA2, we also observed that production of IL-10 relies significantly on key metabolic pathways often utilized by ILC2s. We intend to expand our studies by investigating the role of glycolysis, fatty acid oxidation and signaling protein AMPK, with the aim of identifying mechanistic targets for the potential modulatory therapies for allergic disease. Additionally, mitochondrial regulation of IL-10 production with be explored through in vitro and ex vivo mitochondrial dynamic assays. Finally, the two parts of this project come together to address specific transcriptional and metabolic requirements for the modulation of pathogenic ILC2s with the intention of targeted conversion to ILC210s with the ability to regulate airway hyperreactivity. The results obtained from this study will provide novel insights into an important and understudied role of ILC210s in diseases associated with ILC2s such as allergic lung inflammation and asthma.