ABSTRACT
Extracellular nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) cleaving activity of a particular cell type determines the rate of the degradation of extracellular NAD with formation of metabolites in the vicinity of the plasma membrane, which has important physiological consequences. It is yet to be elucidated whether intact human neutrophils have any extracellular NAD cleaving activity. In this study, with a simple fluorometric assay utilizing 1,N6-ethenoadenine dinucleotide (etheno-NAD) as the substrate, we have shown that intact peripheral human neutrophils have scant extracellular etheno-NAD cleaving activity, which is much less than that of mouse bone marrow neutrophils, mouse peripheral neutrophils, human monocytes and lymphocytes. With high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), we have identified that ADP-ribose (ADPR) is the major extracellular metabolite of NAD degradation by intact human neutrophils. The scant extracellular etheno-NAD cleaving activity is decreased further by N-formyl-methionine-leucine-phenylalanine (fMLP), a chemoattractant for neutrophils. The fMLP-mediated decrease in the extracellular etheno-NAD cleaving activity is reversed by WRW4, a potent FPRL1 antagonist. These findings show that a much less extracellular etheno-NAD cleaving activity of intact human neutrophils compared to other immune cell types is down-regulated by fMLP via a low affinity fMLP receptor FPRL1.