Transcriptional response of confluent human umbilical vein endothelial cells to stimulation with the related cytokines interleukin-1b or interleukin-33.

The similar response of endothelial cells to exogenous IL-33 or IL-1β prompted us to compare the genome-wide transcription profile of confluent human umbilical vein endothelial cell (HUVEC) cultures after 4 hours exposure to IL-33 or IL-1β. Analysis of these data revealed a striking similarity in the transcriptional response to the two cytokines. Pooled HUVEC from 10 donors were seeded 10.000 cells/cm2 and cultured for 4 days before stimulation for 4 hours with IL-1β 0.5 ng/ml or IL-33 50 ng/ml. Total RNA was isolated using the RNeasy Mini Kit (Qiagen) according to instructions of the manufacturer. Microarrays were performed using an Illumina Human6 v2 Expression Beadchip, and the raw data was pre-processed by Illumina’s BeadStudio software V2. The expression service was provided by Helse Sør-Øst/University of Oslo Microarray Core Facility, a member of the Norwegian Microarray Consortium supported by the functional genomics program (FUGE) at the Research Council of Norway.