Mechanisms of Epigenomic and Functional Convergence Between Glucocorticoid- and IL4-Driven Macrophage Programming.

Macrophages adopt distinct phenotypes in response to environmental cues, with type-2 cytokine interleukin-4 promoting a tissue-repair homeostatic state (M2 IL4 ). Glucocorticoids, widely used anti-inflammatory therapeutics, reportedly impart a similar phenotype (M2 GC ), but how such disparate pathways may functionally converge is unknown. We show using integrative functional genomics that M2 IL4 and M2 GC transcriptomes share a striking overlap mirrored by a shift in chromatin landscape in both common and signal-specific gene subsets. This core homeostatic program is enacted by transcriptional effectors KLF4 and the GC receptor, whose genome-wide occupancy and actions are integrated in a stimulus-specific manner by the nuclear receptor cofactor GRIP1. Indeed, many of the M2 IL4 :M2 GC -shared transcriptomic changes were GRIP1-dependent. Consistently, GRIP1 loss attenuated phagocytic activity of both populations in vitro and macrophage tissue-repair properties in the murine colitis model in vivo . These findings provide a mechanistic framework for homeostatic macrophage programming by distinct signals, to better inform anti-inflammatory drug design.