Cannabidiol Regulates Gene Expression in Encephalitogenic T cells Using Histone Methylation and noncoding RNA during Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis

Cannabidiol (CBD) has been shown by our laboratory to attenuate experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), an animal model of multiple sclerosis (MS). In this study, we used microarray and next generation sequencing (NGS)-based approaches to determine whether CBD would alter genome-wide histone modification and gene expression in MOG sensitized lymphocytes. We compared H3K4me3 and H3K27me3 marks in CD4+ T cells from naïve, EAE and CBD treated EAE mice by ChIP-seq. Although the overall methylation level of these two histone marks did not change significantly, the signal intensity and coverage differed in individual genes, suggesting that CBD may modulate gene expression by altering histone methylation. Further analysis showed that these histone methylation signals were differentially enriched in the binding sites of certain transcription factors, such as ZNF143 and FoxA1, suggesting that these transcription factors may play important roles in CBD mediated immune modulation. Using microarray analysis, we found that the expression pattern of many EAE-induced genes was reversed by CBD treatment which was consistent with its effect on attenuating the clinical symptoms of EAE. A unique finding of this study was that the expression of many miRNAs and lncRNAs was dramatically affected by CBD. In summary, this study demonstrates that CBD suppresses inflammation through multiple mechanisms, from histone methylation to miRNA to lncRNA.