Role of lipoxin A4 in the cell-to-cell interaction between all-trans retinoic acid-treated acute promyelocytic leukemic cells and alveolar macrophages

Differentiation therapy with all‐trans retinoic acid (ATRA) has been used successfully to treat acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), but such treatment also causes differentiation syndrome (DS) by inducing APL cell infiltration into alveolar spaces. The mechanism underlying the clearance of infiltrated APL cells has not been investigated in detail. Lipoxin A4 (LXA4) is an important anti‐inflammatory mediator during the resolution of inflammation. In this study, the role of LXA4 in the cell–cell interaction between alveolar macrophages (AMϕ; NR8383 cells) and APL NB4 cells was investigated and found that conditioned medium (CM) harvested from ATRA‐treated NR8383 (ATRA‐NR8383) cells was able to induce the transmigration of ATRA‐NB4 cells. However, the pro‐migratory activity of CM was attenuated progressively when ATRA‐NR8383 cells were co‐cultured with increased cell dosages of apoptotic NB4 cells. A significantly higher amount of LXA4 was released into the CM by ATRA‐NR8383 cells when they were co‐cultured with apoptotic ATRA‐NB4 cells. Expression of a receptor for LXA4 (ALX/FPR2) was enhanced in both ATRA‐NB4 cells and ATRA‐NR8383 cells. Exogenous LXA4 treatment was able to inhibit the transmigration of ATRA‐NB4 cells and induce the phagocytic clearance of apoptotic cells by ATRA‐NR8383 cells. The anti‐migratory activity of exogenous LXA4 was attenuated by pre‐treating ATRA‐NB4 cells with an ALX/FPR2 inhibitor. We conclude that AMϕ‐derived LXA4 plays an important role in the interaction between AMϕ and APL cells and that this contributes to clearance of apoptotic APL cells. J. Cell. Physiol. 227: 1123–1129, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.