Analysis of IL-6 and IL-1β Gene coding and study on specific clearance using histidine-grafted PVDF membranes

Abstract

Severely infected patients produce large amounts of inflammatory cytokines, such as interleukin-6 (IL-6) and interleukin-1β (IL-1β), leading to a "cytokine storm", which is a clinically refractory condition. Because IL-6 and IL-1β differ significantly in gene family, chromosomal location, protein structure, and signaling pathways, existing techniques are ineffective at simultaneously removing cytokines. This work developed a novel blood purification material by chemically grafting histidine onto a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane. ATR-FTIR and XPS analyses confirmed the successful grafting of histidine onto the PVDF membrane. Following histidine grafting, the membrane’s adsorption capacity for IL-6 in aqueous solution increased with histidine concentration. The optimized histidine-grafted PVDF membrane achieved adsorption rates of (36 ± 4)% for IL-6 and (63 ± 5) % for IL-1β in plasma. Additionally, the histidine-grafted PVDF membrane demonstrated enhanced biocompatibility, exhibiting a low hemolysis rate, minimal adsorption of red blood cells and platelets, and anticoagulant properties without activating the coagulation cascade. This histidine-grafted PVDF membrane offers a promising new therapeutic strategy for treating severe infections and holds significant potential for clinical application.

Keywords

Pro-inflammatory cytokines / Gene coding / PVDF membrane / Interleukin-6 / Interleukin-1β

Declaration of Competing Interest

There are no conflicts of interest related to this work.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.82500783) and the Tianjin Natural Science Foundation for Youth (Grant No.22JCQNJC00890).

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