Authors’ contributions VB and MB conceived the project. RP helped with M.tuberculosis culturing. SB and MJ contributed equally to the experiments. VB, MB, SB and MJ participated in experiment design and data interpretation and manuscript preparation. All authors read and approved the manuscript.”
“Background Asymptomatic histological inflammation is a common feature when prostate tissue is subjected to morphological examination.

Varying degree of inflammation is present at both benign (prostatic hyperplasia) and malignant Saracatinib (neoplasia) conditions. A growing amount of research supports the idea that chronic prostatic inflammation contributes to gradual transition of normal epithelial cells to malignant cells [1]. For example, many of the gene-variants linked to familiar prostate cancer PRN1371 mouse code for proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines [2]. A plethora of microorganisms have been evaluated for their possible involvement in the etiology of prostate inflammation. Many studies purported E. coli and sexually transmitted agents as likely candidates capable of inducing chronic prostatic inflammation [3–5]. A Gram-positive bacterium; Propionibacterium acnes (P. acnes) has been reported to be frequently present in various prostatic diseases (as reviewed in [6]) and its presence has been correlated to inflammation in prostate cancer specimens [7–9]. P. acnes, a well

studied pathogenetic factor in cutaneous disorders like acne vulgaris, has been demonstrated to stimulate monocytes and endothelial cells to secrete pro-inflammatory cytokines via activation of Toll-like receptor (TLR) 2 [10, 11]. In this study we present an in vitro model to study the inflammatory response of prostate Etofibrate derived epithelial cells to P. acnes infection. We report that P. acnes induces upregulation of numerous pro-inflammatory substances at the mRNA level accompanied by secretion of respective soluble substances such as interleukins 6,

8 and GM-CSF. Components of the TLR2-NFκB signaling pathway were upregulated, suggesting an involvement of this particular pathway for the response. Blocking of the TLR2 with monoclonal antibodies partly reduced the effects. Results Pilot studies to define experimental conditions for P. acnes infection of epithelial cells Secretion of cytokines is one of the end results of innate immune response at a cellular level. We therefore assessed the secretion of three key cytokines, IL-6, IL-8 and GM-CSF (also called CSF-2) from the prostate-derived epithelial cell-line RWPE-1 in response to infection with P. acnes. To set experimental conditions as multiplicity of infection (MOI) and useful infection time, we defined the desired criteria as this website maximal cytokine secretion after 48 h and no visual cellular detachment or cell-death. A MOI of 16-40:1 fulfilled these criteria (data not shown). We therefore decided to use a MOI of 16:1 for the following experiments.