Kowsar Hepat Mon 1735-3408 18 8 2018 7 25 10.5812/hepatmon.63676 Farinaz Behfarjam Mohammad Hossein Sanati Zohreh Jadali Zahra Soheila Soheili Siavash Nasseri Moghaddam Mitra Ataei Sepideh Nikfam Research Article 2018 4 12 2017 11 5 2018 7 25 2018 08 28 Background : Autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) is an inflammatory liver disorder that commonly affects women. The T cells and one of their major products, IFN-γ, are critically involved in the pathogenesis of AIH. Therefore, targeting of IFN-γ can probably be therapeutically useful while avoiding the long-term side effects of conventional immunosuppressive therapy. RNA interference, provides an ideal way to achieve this purpose. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of IFN-γ-siRNA on IFN-γ expression in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells of patients with AIH. Methods : In order to evaluate the anti-cytokine therapy with IFN-γ-siRNA, the PBMCs of AIH patients were cultured and transfected with IFN-γ-siRNA. After validation of transfection efficiency, the effects of gene silencing were tested with quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and intracellular flow cytometry. Results : The efficiently transfected cells, with the targeted IFN-γ-siRNA, without affecting cell viability showed a strong gene knockdown. The IFN-γ gene expression was significantly decreased in transfected cells (P < 0.05). Moreover, flow cytometric analysis confirmed the decrease of the intracellular IFN-γ protein level after siRNA transfection. Conclusions : Collectively, the results of the present study suggested that modifying the cytokine profile without inducing apoptosis using siRNA-based technology could be a promising tool for therapeutic intervention in T cells-dependent inflammatory diseases like AIH. http://hepatmon.com/en/articles/63676.html https://cdn.neoscriber.org/cdn/dl/86c0e820-ad45-11e8-b1a7-472909894efe