Bibliographic record
Abstract
Renal cell injury, death and inflammation are hallmarks of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Unresolved inflammation can chronically damage renal tissue resulting in fibrosis and kidney failure. The Nlrp3 inflammasome has been implicated in the innate immune response to cellular injury and represents a potentially important pathway in the pathogenesis of CKD. The central hypothesis of this thesis is that NLRP3 plays a significant role in renal inflammation and chronic renal injury. In a mouse model of progressive renal injury and fibrosis (unilateral ureteral obstruction, UUO), Nlrp3 expression and inflammasome activation were increased in injured kidneys. Compared to wild-type counterparts, Nlrp3-/-mice undergoing UUO displayed reduced renal injury, fibrosis and inflammatory cytokine levels confirming an important role for Nlrp3 in experimental kidney disease. Bone marrow chimeras in the UUO model indicated that in addition to its inflammasome-forming capabilities in leukocytes, Nlrp3 may play a novel role in the renal epithelial compartment. Indeed, Nlrp3 expression was found in both human and mouse primary tubular epithelial cells. Unlike the inflammasome-forming capability of Nlrp3 in macrophages, renal tubular epithelial cells lacked the components of the inflammasome including caspase-1 and its substrate IL-1β. Rather, Nlrp3 primarily regulated caspase-8 activation and apoptosis in these cells. Experiments to elucidate the mechanism of Nlrp3- regulated caspase-8 activation and apoptosis suggested the involvement of Asc, but not inflammatory cytokines, caspase-1 or caspase-11. Furthermore, Nlrp3-/- tubular epithelial cells were found to have impaired mitochondrial ROS production that was linked to decreased caspase-8 activation during apoptosis. Taken together, results from this thesis identify a significant and multidimensional role for Nlrp3 in the pathogenesis of kidney disease. First, Nlrp3 inflammasome activation in macrophages releases cytokines such as IL-1β and IL-18 that cause renal inflammation, fibrosis and tubular epithelial cell apoptosis. Second, Nlrp3 expressed in tubular epithelial cells displays an intrinsic inflammasome-independent function to regulate caspase-8, mitochondrial ROS and apoptosis. These data identify Nlrp3 as an important player in renal injury and potential therapeutic target for CKD.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".