New insights into the roles of RGC-32

摘要

During the last few years,the expression patterns and roles of response gene to complement 32(RGC-32)in various cells and diseases have been hot topics.1 RGC-32 can act as a cell cycle regulator and is involved not only in cell proliferation2 but also in cell differentiation.RGC-32 was found to be essential for TGF-β-induced vascular smooth muscle cell differentiation from neural crest cells.3 The RGC-32 expression levels were significantly higher in unstimulated peripheral CD14+cells from hyper-immunoglobulin E syndrome patients compared with those from healthy controls.4 Moreover,RGC-32 was identified to be co-localized with CD68+cells in multiple sclerosis plaques.5 The above studies and importance of monocytes/macrophages in immune regulation drove us to explore the expression and function of RGC-32 in monocytes/macrophages.