The Generation of an Engineered Interleukin-10 Protein With Improved Stability and Biological Function

Journal article

Interleukin-10 (IL-10) is an immunoregulatory cytokine that plays a pivotal role in modulating inflammation. IL-10 has inhibitory effects on proinflammatory cytokine production and function in vitro and in vivo; as such, IL-10 is viewed as a potential treatment for various inflammatory diseases. However, a significant drawback of using IL-10 in clinical application is the fact that the biologically active form of IL-10 is an unstable homodimer, which has a short half-life and is easily degraded in vivo. Consequently, IL-10 therapy using recombinant native IL-10 has had only limited success in the treatment of human disease. To improve the therapeutic potential of IL-10, we have generated a novel form of IL-10, which consists of two IL-10 monomer subunits linked in a head to tail fashion by a flexible linker. We show that the linker length per se did not affect the expression and biological activity of the stable IL-10 molecule, which was more active than natural IL-10, both in vitro and in vivo. We confirmed that the new form of IL-10 had a much-improved temperature- and pH-dependent biological stability compared to natural IL-10. The IL-10 dimer protein binds to the IL-10 receptor similarly to the natural IL-10 protein, as shown by antibody blocking and through the genetic modifications of one monomer in the IL-10 dimer specifically at the IL-10 receptor binding site. Finally, we showed that stable IL-10 is more effective at suppressing LPS-induced-inflammation in vivo compared to the natural IL-10. In conclusion, we have developed a new stable dimer version of the IL-10 protein with improved stability and efficacy to suppress inflammation. We propose that this novel stable IL-10 dimer could serve as the basis for the development of targeted anti-inflammatory drugs.

Authors: Minshawi, F; Lanvermann, S; McKenzie, E; Jeffery, R; Couper, K

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Frontiers Media
• Journal: Frontiers in Immunology
• Volume: 11
• Pages: 1794-1794
• Publication date: 2020-08-11
• DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2020.01794
• EISSN: 1664-3224
• ISSN: 1664-3224
• Language: English
• Keywords: Biological activity; Proinflammatory cytokine; Immunology; Receptor; Biophysics; Interleukin; In vivo; Cytokine; Dimer; Genetics; In vitro; Chemistry; Inflammation; Biology; Cell biology; Recombinant DNA; Interleukin 2; Biochemistry; Gene