Abstract
Antisense oligomers can inhibit expression of a single gene in a sequence-specific manner. As a result, these sequences are being developed both as powerful experimental tools in the laboratory and as a novel class of therapeutic agents. In this study, we evaluated a panel of morpholino antisense (M-AS) oligomers for their ability to inhibit tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) production by primary murine alveolar macrophages (AMs) and compared them with the more commonly used phosphorothioate oligonucleotides (S-AS). We found that 25 μM of morpholino oligomers whose sequence spanned the AUG (M-AS 2, M-AS 2me, and M-AS 5) start codon of TNF-α significantly inhibited TNF production on stimulation by both lipopolysaccharides (LPS) (36.6 ± 3.2%, 27.3 ± 3.0%, and 37.7 ± 2.0% inhibition, respectively), whereas S-AS targeted toward the same region were ineffective. M-AS 2 and M-AS 2me also significantly inhibited TNF production in AMs stimulated by adherence to a solid substrate (28.7 ± 2.2% and 29.4 ± 8.3% inhibition, respectively). Increasing the concentration of M-AS 2 and M-AS 2me to 50 μM improved their efficacy in both LPS-stimulated (42.7 ± 1.5% and 45.9 ± 2.1% inhibition, respectively) and adherence-stimulated (52.6 ± 0.7% and 41.7 ± 2.9% inhibition, respectively) AMs. In contrast, we showed that neither an antisense sequence targeted to a region upstream of the AUG site (M-AS 4) nor the nonsense control sequences M-NS 1 and M-NS 2 significantly inhibited TNF-α production by AMs on exposure to either stimulus. The data indicate that morpholino oligomers inhibit TNF-α production by murine AMs in a sequence-dependent and dose-dependent manner.
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