Lung inflammatory milieu in mice with chronic CD4+ T cell mediated auto-immune inflammation of the lung

Noncommunicable chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs) such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma affect hundreds of millions of people and are associated with increasing morbidity and mortality. CRDs are multifactorial disorders and despite different etiologies they commonly manifest in pulmonary structural (airway remodeling, emphysema) and/or functional changes. In this study we used mice intrinsically developing autoimmune-mediated lung inflammation associated with lung pathology and immune imprinting partly comparable to hallmarks of CRD. The so called SPC-HAxTCR-HA transgenic mice (BALB/c genetic background), express a neo-self antigen (influenza A virus hemagglutinin, HA) on lung alveolar epithelial type II cells in the presence of HA-specific CD4+ T cells leading to the establishment of chronic lung inflammation. In order to characterize the inflammatory lung milieu of SPC-HAxTCR-HA mice in comparison to SPC-HA control mice (lacking HA-specific CD4+ T cells), we performed whole lung tissue transcriptional analyses (n = 3 / group). 378 transcripts were found to be differentially expressed in SPC-HAxTCR-HA lungs. 326 of those were up-regulated and 52 were down-regulated compared to SPC-HA control mice. In total six microarrays were performed. Per mouse group (SPC-HAxTCR-HA, SPC-HA) three individual replicates were analyzed.