Anti-radiation damage effect of polyethylenimine as a toll-like receptor 5 targeted agonist

Hu, Zhiqiang; Xing, Yaling; Qian, Yuanyu; Chen, Xiaojuan; Tu, Jian; Ren, Lening; Wang, Kai; Chen, Zhongbin

Activation of the TLR5-NF-κB signaling pathway has emerged as an effective mechanism in developing radiation protection compounds [17] [18] [19] [20] . NF-κB is an important nuclear transcriptional regulation factor, which participates in the transcription regulation of diverse genes, and actively contributes to immune response and cell cycle activity. Investigation of the NF-κB pathway has unveiled its involvement in certain medical conditions, such as cardiovascular diseases, neurological disorders, immune dysfunctions, tumors and radiation-induced injury [17] [18] [19] [20] . Establishment of an effective cell-based model for screening agonists of the human TLR5-mediated NF-κB pathway will help to identify compounds with greater specific action on the pathway, without side-effects on other signaling networks, to achieve pharmacological effects. For this purpose, we cloned the human TLR5 gene and created pcDNA3.1-V5/HisB-hTLR5 plasmid for use in the present study. Our human TLR5 cell model is more suitable for screening the human type TLR5-mediated NF-kB activity aiming for human therapeutic application than the early commercial murine TLR5 plasmid model used in previous studies [13] .