Identification of Human Immune Cell Subtypes Most Vulnerable to IL-1ß-induced Inflammatory Signaling Using Mass Cytometry

Hema Kothari; Corey M. Williams; Chantel McSkimming; Mythili Vigneshwar; Eli R. Zunder; Coleen A. McNamara

The representative SPADE tree shows IL-1β-induced expression of p-NF-kB, p-p38 and p-ERK across different immune cell types with 15 minutes of stimulation (Fig. 1e) Fig. 5a,b) . While T cells, monocytes and DCs in the vehicle-treated samples showed basal levels of p-NF-kB, p-p38 and p-ERK, IL-1β stimulation led to a marked upregulation of p-NF-kB expression prominently in the CD4 and CD4 -CD8 low T cell subsets (Fig. 1e ). Additionally, a modest level of IL-1βinduced p-NF-kB expression was observed in the CD11c mDCs and NK cells. IL-1β induced p-p38 expression primarily in CD14 monocytes and to a lower extent in CD11c mDCs and CD4 T cells. IL-1β did not induce p-ERK expression in any immune cell type, and B cells were relatively unresponsive to IL-1β stimulation (Fig. 1e) . As expected, short-time stimulation of PBMCs with IL-1β did not induce STAT activation ( Fig. 6a and Supplementary Fig. 6 ).