Tuberculosis (TB) remains a serious public health problem despite the great scientific advances in the recent decades. We have previously shown that aggressive forms of TB caused by hypervirulent strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium bovis are attenuated in mice lacking the P2X7 receptor, an ion channel activated by extracellular ATP. Therefore, P2X7 receptor is a potential ta...

Under physiological conditions, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is present at low levels in the extracellular milieu, being massively released by stressed or dying cells. Once outside the cells, ATP and related nucleotides/nucleoside generated by ectonucleotidases mediate a high evolutionary conserved signaling system: the purinergic signaling, which is involved in a variety of pathological condit...

Recent studies indicate that metabolic oxidative stress, autophagy, and inflammation are hallmarks of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) progression. However, the molecular mechanisms that link these important events in NASH remain unclear. In this study, we investigated the mechanistic role of purinergic receptor X7 (P2X7) in modulating autophagy and resultant inflammation in NASH in response...

We have previously shown that hypertonic stress (HS) can suppress chemoattractant-induced neutrophil responses via cyclic adenosine monophosphate and enhance these responses through p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) activation. The underlying mechanisms are unknown. Here, we report that HS dose-dependently releases adenosine 5'-triphosphate (ATP) from neutrophils and that extracellula...

Axonal injury is a common feature of central nervous system insults that culminates with the death of the affected neurons, and an irreversible loss of function. Inflammation is an important component of the neurodegenerative process, where the microglia plays an important role by releasing proinflammatory factors as well as clearing the death neurons by phagocytosis. Here we have identified th...

Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) is the protozoan parasite that causes toxoplasmosis, a potentially fatal disease to immunocompromised patients, and which affects approximately 30% of the world's population. Previously, we showed that purinergic signaling via the P2X7 receptor contributes to T. gondii elimination in macrophages, through reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and lysosome fusion ...

The P2X7 receptor is an extracellular ATP-gated ion channel found only in eukaryotes (Bartlett et al., 2014). Due to its unique properties among P2X receptors, such as formation of a large conductance pore, the P2X7 receptor has been implicated in devastating diseases like chronic pain (North and Jarvis, 2013). However, mechanisms underlying the P2X7 specific properties remain poorly understood...

P2X4 and P2X7 are members of the P2X receptor family, comprising seven isoforms (P2X1-P2X7) that form homo- and heterotrimeric non-specific cation channels gated by extracellular ATP. P2X4 and P2X7 are widely coexpressed, particularly in secretory epithelial cells and immune and inflammatory cells, and regulate inflammation and nociception. Although functional heteromerization has been establis...