{"doi":"10.3390/biom11081148","title":"Vitamin C Enhances Antiviral Functions of Lung Epithelial Cells","abstract":"Vitamin C is well documented to have antiviral functions; however, there is limited information about its effect on airway epithelial cells—the first cells to encounter infections. Here, we examined the effect of vitamin C on human bronchial epithelium transformed with Ad12-SV40 2B (BEAS-2B) cells, and observed that sodium-dependent vitamin C transporter 2 (SVCT2) was the primary vitamin C transporter. Transcriptomic analysis revealed that treating BEAS-2B cells with vitamin C led to a significant upregulation of several metabolic pathways and interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs) along with a downregulation of pathways involved in lung injury and inflammation. Remarkably, vitamin C also enhanced the expression of the viral-sensing receptors retinoic acid-inducible gene 1 (RIG-1) and melanoma differentiation-associated protein 5 (MDA-5), which was confirmed at the protein and functional levels. In addition, the lungs of l-gulono-γ-lactone oxidase knockout (GULO-KO) mice also displayed a marked decrease in these genes compared to wild-type controls. Collectively, our findings indicate that vitamin C acts at multiple levels to exert its antiviral and protective functions in the lungs.","journal":"Biomolecules","year":2021,"id":173651,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":24,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9579,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":410271,"name":"Sudhanshu Agrawal","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":499958,"name":"Gabriela De Robles","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":499962,"name":"Farah Rahmatpanah","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":711639,"name":"Veedamali S. Subramanian","orcid":"0000-0003-1159-3916","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":294086,"name":"Anshu Agrawal","orcid":"0000-0002-3323-9152","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":711638,"name":"Trevor Teafatiller","orcid":"0000-0001-5576-8509","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":52,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:46:49.903770Z","pmid":"34439814","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}