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. 2024 Mar:125:109558.
doi: 10.1016/j.jnutbio.2023.109558. Epub 2024 Jan 5.

Antifibrotic effects of vitamin D3 on human lung fibroblasts derived from patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis

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Free article

Antifibrotic effects of vitamin D3 on human lung fibroblasts derived from patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis

Tom Voisin et al. J Nutr Biochem. 2024 Mar.
Free article

Abstract

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive and fatal interstitial lung disease. Up to now, no treatment can stop the progression of IPF. Vitamin D3 (VD) reduces experimental lung fibrosis in murine models and depletion of vitamin D3 might be associated with the reduced survival of patients with IPF. In this context, we determined if VD can prevent the pro-fibrotic functions of human lung fibroblasts (HLFs) isolated from patients with IPF. IPF and control HLFs were derived from surgical lung biopsies collected from patients with IPF or with primary lung cancer, respectively. VD (3-100 nM) markedly reduced the basal and PDGF-induced proliferation of HLFs. VD also altered cell cycle by increasing the percentage of IPF HLFs arrested in the G0/G1 phase, and by downregulating the expression of various cell cycle regulatory proteins. In addition, VD barely prevented the TGF-β1-induced differentiation in HLFs. At 100 nM, VD slightly reduced the expression of the pro-fibrotic marker α-smooth muscle actin, and had no effect on fibronectin and collagen-1 expression. In contrast, 100 nM VD strongly inhibited the aerobic glycolytic metabolism induced by TGF- β1. Finally, VD reduced both the secretion of lactate, the levels of lactate deshydrogenase mRNA and the activity of intracellular LDH in IPF HLFs. In conclusion, our study shows that VD reduced pro-fibrotic functions of HLFs. These findings suggest that it might be interesting to assess the potential clinical benefits of vitamin D supplementation in patients with IPF, especially on lung function decline.

Keywords: Differentiation; Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis; Metabolism; Proliferation; Pulmonary fibroblasts; Vitamin D.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interests SJ has received fees, funding or reimbursement for national and international conferences, boards, expert or opinion groups, research projects over the past 5 years from Actelion, AIRB, Astra Zeneca, Bellorophon Therapeutics, Biogen, BMS, Boehringer Ingelheim, Chiesi, Fibrogen, Galecto Biotech, Genzyme, Gilead, GSK, LVL, Mundipharma, Novartis, Olam Pharm, Pfizer, Pliant Therapeutics, Roche, Sanofi, Savara-Serendex. AJ and LV report grants from Boehringer Ingelheim. The other authors declare that they have no competing interests.All authors declare no conflict of interest and have consented for publication.

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