Loss of Acid Ceramidase in Myeloid Cells Impairs MHC II Expression on Dendritic Cells and Macrophages to Alleviate Chronic Colitis in IL10^−/− Mice

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is characterized by chronic inflammation in the colon and drastically increases the risk in the development of colorectal cancer (CRC). Over expression of acid ceramidase (AC) resulting in accumulation of sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P), which amplify inflammatory pathways, has been implicated in patients with IBD and CRC. The conditional loss of AC in myeloid cells (ACMYE) has demonstrated promise as a therapeutic target in an acute colitis model. We sought to expand the investigation of AC loss in a physiologically relevant model of IBD using IL-10 deficient mice. IL10−/− mice were crossed with AC conditional knockout mice where AC is deleted in myeloid cells to generate ACMYE/IL10−/−, with ACfl/fl/IL10−/− mice used as control. Male and female animals were collected at 8, 12, and 24 weeks of age and assessed for intestinal inflammation. Upon examination of basic parameters of colitis, ACMYE mice exhibited reduced body weight and enlarged spleens at 12 weeks of age. Histologic assessment revealed no difference between genotypes in colitis severity at 8 or 12 weeks of age. Flow cytometry analysis was utilized to define the role of AC in immune cell recruitment. ACMYE mice exhibit reduced MHC II surface expression on antigen presenting cells (APCs) as well as reductions in neutrophil activation markers in peripheral tissues and the colon at 8 weeks of age. Interestingly, at 12 weeks of age ACfl/fl mice demonstrate significant immunosuppression across various cell types in the colon compared to ACMYE mice, whose colonic immune cells demonstrate little change over time. Furthermore, CD8+ cytotoxic T cell populations were significantly elevated in peripheral tissues despite continued reductions of MHC II surface expression on APCs in ACMYE mice at 12 weeks of age. These data indicate that loss of AC may provide protection in early age while resulting in altered inflammation in later age; however, loss of AC may also disrupt MHC II expression as seen consistently in APCs, and may indicate interference with cell-to-cell cross talk. Realtime qPCR revealed that ACMYE mice exhibited significant ablation in the expression of several pro-inflammatory cytokines at 24 weeks of age. Together these data implicate AC as a potential therapeutic target in reducing inflammation in chronic IBD. This work is supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases R01 DK132079 (AJS). This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.