Stefania Croci, Italy

Azienda Unità Sanitaria Locale-IRCCS di Reggio Emilia Autoimmunità, Allergologia e Biotecnologie Innovative
Dr Stefania Croci is a Biotechnologist with a PhD in Oncology. She has 21 years of research experience. She has been trained at the University of Bologna (Italy) on cancer immunoprevention and mechanisms of cancer cell metastasis. She is actually working at the Azienda Unità Sanitaria Locale-IRCCS in Reggio Emilia (Italy) on the identification of biomarkers for diagnosis and response to therapies of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Moreover she is interested in novel pathways driving immune-mediated diseases.

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 Conference Calendar

THERAPEUTIC TARGETS FOR NON-INFECTIOUS UVEITIS BY CYTOKINE PROFILING IN AQUEOUS HUMOR SAMPLES

Session Name
PS14 - NEW CYTOKINES AND ANTI-CYTOKINES IN AUTOIMMUNITY
Session Type
PARALLEL SESSIONS
Date
29.05.2021, Saturday
Session Time
15:30 - 17:30
Room
HALL B
Lecture Time
16:40 - 16:50
Presenter
Session Icon
Pre Recorded

Abstract

Background and Aims

Non-infectious uveitis comprises sight-threatening intraocular inflammatory conditions with unknown etiology. Corticosteroid are the mainstay of therapy. However, tailoring therapies on each individual molecular profile and developing new targeted-therapies are unmet clinical needs. We thus aimed to identify cytokines dysregulated in aqueous humor (AH) from patients with uveitis associated with Behcet’s (BD) and Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada (VKH) disease, two systemic inflammatory diseases.

Methods

Concentrations of 27 cytokines were measured in AH samples from patients with active panuveitis (n=10 BD, n=10 VKH) versus healthy controls (HC, n=10) using a multiplex immunoassay. Leukocytes in AH were counted and characterized by flow cytometry.

Results

IL-6, IP-10, G-CSF, IFNγ showed higher concentrations in AH from both BD and VKH patients while IL-2, IL-4, IL-8, IL-13, TNFα, MIP-1α, eotaxin, IL-1ra showed higher concentrations only in AH from BD patients compared with HC. GM-CSF was the sole cytokine with lower levels in AH from BD patients. No statistically significant differences were found between BD and VKH patients. The concentrations of IL-6, IL-4, IL-8, IP-10, G-CSF, IFNγ, TNFα, MIP-1α, eotaxin, IL-1ra positively correlated with the concentrations of leukocytes in AH, mainly with those of monocytes and granulocytes, suggesting that such cytokines were produced by and/or attracted and/or promoted proliferation and survival of immune cells in these types of uveitis. The AH over plasma cytokine ratios intra-individuals suggested that IL-2, IL-6, IP-10, GM-CSF were produced also intraocularly.

Conclusions

AH sampling followed by cytokine profiling can highlight which cytokines are dysregulated intraocularly in each individual, providing a rationale for tailoring treatments in patients with non-infectious uveitis.

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