Fig. 5
Cytokine production by stimulated micromasses treated with IL-10 viral vectors. Micromasses from synovial cell suspensions of five patients were transduced with lentiviral vectors coding for PGK-luciferase, PGK-IL10 or CXCL10p-IL10 after formation of a synovial lining. Subsequently, the micromasses were stimulated with medium containing 100 ng/ml LPS (all patients) or 10 ng/ml TNF-α (three patients). The concentrations of IL-1β (a), IL-6 (b) and TNF-α (c) in the supernatant after 24 h were measured using a multiplex ELISA assay. IL-1β and TNF-α could only be quantified in three patients. Because of high variations in IL-6 production between patients, the values were first normalized for every individual patient for PGK-luc unstimulated. The basal values (pg/ml) were 2.7 × 105, 6.5 × 105, 2.7 × 104, 5.1 × 104 and 3.3 × 105 respectively. The medium, LPS- and TNF-α-stimulated groups were compared by t test. Significancies without a capped line were compared to PGK-luc. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001. IL-1β interleukin-1 beta, IL-6 interleukin-6, LPS lipopolysaccharide, TNF-α tumour necrosis factor alpha