Research Article Cigarette Smoke Suppresses the Surface Expression of

Copyright © 2013 M. E. Givi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a multicomponent disease characterized by emphysema and/or chronic bronchitis. COPD ismostly associatedwith cigarette smoking. Cigarette smoke contains over 4,700 chemical compounds, including free radicals and LPS (a Toll-Like Receptor 4 agonist) at concentrations which may contribute to the pathogenesis of diseases like COPD.We have previously shown that short-term exposure to cigarette smokemedium (CSM) can stimulate several inflammatory cells via TLR4 and that CSM reduces the degranulation of bone-marrow-derived mast cells (BMMCs). In the current study, the effect of CSM onmast cells maturation and function was investigated. Coculturing of BMMCwith CSM during the development of bone marrow progenitor cells suppressed the granularity and the surface expression of c-kit and F