Upregulation of Multidrug Resistance-Associated Protein 1 by Allyl Isothiocyanate in Human Bronchial Epithelial Cell: Involvement of c-Jun N-Terminal Kinase Signaling Pathway

Multidrug resistance-associated protein 1 (MRP1) plays a protective role in the etiology and progression of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) which results from oxidative stress and inflammation of lung injury. The lower functional MRP1 activity is related to COPD development. Our previous study showed that Allyl isothiocyanate (AITC) induced the expression and activity of MRP1 in a dose-dependent manner. However, which signaling pathway contributes to the upregulation of MRP1 by AITC is unclear. In this study, signaling pathway specific inhibitors were used to examine the mechanism of AITC. We found that JNK inhibitor SP600125 treatment decreased MRP1 mRNA expression in 16HBE14o- cells. But the ERK inhibitor U0126 or PI3K/Akt inhibitor LY294002 produced no obvious effect. The AITC-induced increase of MRP1 mRNA expression was abolished by cotreatment of SP600125, while it was not obviously affected by U0126 or LY294002. Furthermore, AITC acivates the JNK signaling pathway in 16HBE14o- cells. Finally, we found that JNK pathway mediated the upregulation of AITC-induced expression and function of MRP1. Taken together, our results indicated that AITC increased the expression and the activity of MRP1 via a JNK-dependent pathway. ERK and PI3K signaling pathway were not involved in the expression of MRP1 mRNA.