Authors
Yunfeng Zhou, Ying Zhang, Miao Zhu, Chenghui Liao, Weie Li, Jie Wang, Tie Chen, Yuan Cheng, Peter Staeheli, Liang Ye
Published in
The Journal of experimental medicine. Volume 223. Issue 8. Aug 03, 2026. Epub Jul 06, 2026.
Abstract
Renal fibrosis is a critical step in chronic kidney disease (CKD) progression, but fibrosis induction is still not understood well. We found that IFN-λ is a profibrotic factor that is upregulated in fibrotic human and mouse kidneys. IFN-λ receptor deficiency ameliorated renal fibrosis in mice while exogenous IFN-λ exacerbated disease, establishing a detrimental role of IFN-λ signaling in renal fibrosis. Mechanistically, we found that IFN-λ promotes fibrosis by preferentially acting on renal fibroblasts, inducing their activation and migration through ERK/JNK-dependent synthesis of TGF-β and activation of the TGF-β-SMAD2/3 signaling pathway. Renal tubular epithelial cell (TEC)-derived IFN-λ induced by RIG-I/MAVS signaling emerged as a critical driver of renal fibroblast activation and fibrogenesis. Importantly, neutralizing antibodies against IFN-λ strongly attenuated renal fibrosis in mice. Thus, the renal TEC-IFN-λ-fibroblast axis is a previously unrecognized pathway of renal fibrosis induction that represents an attractive novel target for mitigating CKD progression.
PMID:
42405949
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 06 Jul 2026.
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