Preclinical safety and pharmacology of an anti-human interleukin-13 monoclonal antibody in normal macaques and in macaques with allergic asthma.

Interleukin-13 (IL-13) plays a central role in chronic airway diseases, including asthma. These studies were conducted to evaluate the safety of administration of a human anti-IL-13 monoclonal antibody (mAb) to normal macaques and in macaques with allergic asthma. In addition, serum and bronchioalveolar lavage fluid were collected from allergic cynomolgus macaques in order to identify potential surrogate markers of IL-13 pharmacology that could be useful for subsequent clinical trials. In vitro studies demonstrated that the anti-IL-13 mAb inhibited the pharmacological actions of both human and cynomolgus macaque IL-13. Allergic macaques were treated systemically with 10 mg/kg anti-IL-13 mAb 1 day prior to inhaled Ascaris suum antigen challenge. Normal macaques were dosed intravenously with anti-IL-13 once per week for 3 weeks at doses of 10 or 50 mg/kg. Treatment of macaques with the anti-IL-13 mAb was not associated with any toxicologically significant findings. A slight treatment-related but nonadverse decrease in platelet counts was observed in both the normal and allergic macaques. In allergic macaques, the anti-IL-13 mAb treatment did not affect lung function, lung eosinophilia, or serum or BAL immunoglobulin E (IgE) concentrations but did produce a reduction in BAL and serum eotaxin concentrations (p < .05) at 6 h post antigen challenge. This study shows that administration of an anti-IL-13 mAb was well tolerated in both normal and allergic asthmatic macaques and that serum eotaxin concentrations may be a useful early in vivo marker for evaluating IL-13 inhibition in patients with asthma.

Dynamics of molecular responses to coxsackievirus B4 infection differentiate between resolution and progression of acute pancreatitis.

A coxsackievirus B4 induces acute pancreatitis with different outcomes. The study utilized a systems biology approach to identify molecular immune responses that differentiate between disease resolution and disease progression. The data establish a temporal pattern of host responses that differentiate the resolution of acute pancreatitis from the progression to chronic pancreatitis. A group of twenty-five genes exhibited characteristic expression profiles that were observed during the development of chronic pancreatitis but not during the resolution of disease. We postulate that the temporal dynamics of the twenty-five genes influence the development of pathogenic immune responses associated with chronic pancreatitis. Furthermore, a subset of eleven genes exhibited increased expression as viral titers waned. Of the eleven gene products, five are secreted molecules, TNF-α, IFN-γ, CXCL10, IL-10, and IL-22b, and represent novel potential therapeutic targets since they can be readily modulated with antibodies against the specific cytokine/chemokine or with antibodies against the corresponding receptors.

IL-10 is pathogenic during the development of coxsackievirus B4-induced chronic pancreatitis.

Using a mouse model of coxsackievirus B4 (CVB4-V)-induced chronic pancreatitis, we investigated whether cytokines are involved in the progression of acute disease to chronic inflammatory disease. We show that IL-10 contributed to the development of chronic pancreatitis since acute disease resolved when IL-10 was absent or when IL-10 signaling was disrupted. We explored the underlying mechanisms by which IL-10 affected disease progression, using a novel approach to assess immunological events occurring in situ. Multiple markers that define functional innate immune responses and functional T cell responses were monitored over the course of CVB4-V infection of wild-type and IL-10 knockout mice, using a multiplex transcriptional profiling approach. We show that high levels of IL-10 early during infection were associated with delayed innate and T cell responses. Furthermore, high IL-10 production correlated with altered kinetics of T regulatory responses indicating a disruption in the balance between effector and regulatory T cell responses.