Heterogeneity of foam cell biogenesis across diseases

Foam cells are dysfunctional, lipid-laden macrophages associated with chronic inflammation of infectious and non-infectious origin. To test the hypothesis that foam cell biogenesis is disease-specific, we compared bulk transcriptomics data obtained by RNA seq in human monocyte derived macrophages (MDM) subjected to two types of infections in vitro. One was with Mycobacterium tuberculosis and the other with Cryptococcus neoformans. We also exposed MDM to cell-free conditioned medium from cultures of the ACHN cell line, which is derived from a human renal cell carcinoma, to study foam cell formation in the context of papillary renal cell carcinoma (pRCC). We found that, with both infections, the accumulation of TAG results from decreased oxidative phosphorylation, increased glycolysis, increased lipid biosynthesis, and decreased lipid catabolism. However, the molecular modalities of