L-selectin and P-selectin are novel biomarkers of cervicovaginal inflammation for preclinical mucosal safety assessment of anti-HIV-1 microbicide.

A major obstacle thwarting preclinical development of microbicides is the lack of a validated biomarker of cervicovaginal inflammation. Therefore, the present study aims to identify novel noninvasive soluble markers in a murine model for assessment of microbicide mucosal safety. By performing cytokine antibody array analysis, we identified two adhesion molecules, L-selectin and P-selectin, which significantly increased when mucosal inflammation was triggered by nonoxynol-9 (N9), an anti-HIV-1 microbicide candidate that failed clinical trials, in a refined murine model of agent-induced cervicovaginal inflammation. We found that patterns of detection of L-selectin and P-selectin were obviously different from those of the two previously defined biomarkers of cervicovaginal inflammation, monocyte chemotactic protein 1 (MCP-1) and interleukin 6 (IL-6). The levels of these two soluble selectins correlated better than those of MCP-1 and IL-6 with the duration and severity of mucosal inflammation triggered by N9 and two approved proinflammatory compounds, benzalkonium chloride (BZK) and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), but not by two nonproinflammatory compounds, carboxymethyl celluose (CMC; microbicide excipients) and tenofovir (TFV; microbicide candidate). These data indicated that L-selectin and P-selectin can serve as additional novel cervicovaginal inflammation biomarkers for preclinical mucosal safety evaluation of candidate microbicides for the prevention of infection with HIV and other sexually transmitted pathogens.