Anti-inflammatory properties of low dose epirubicin on human macrophages

Low-dose epirubicin at non-cytotoxic doses down regulated NLRP3 inflammasome components and reduced the release of proinflammatory cytokines. These anti-inflammatory effects were a result of global transcriptional suppression of LPS-dependent genes. THP-1 cells were differentiated to macrophages and cells were treated with or without epirubicin (0.25 μg/ml) for 24h and with or without LPS (100 ng/ml) for three hours resulting in four treatment conditions (1. -EPI/- LPS; 2. –EPI/+LPS; 3. +EPI/-LPS; 4. +EPI/+LPS). RNA was isolated and microarray analysis was performed by a commercial transcriptomics provider. Expression analysis was performed using Transcriptome analysis concole (TAC).