Xiang Z, Zhou Z-J, Xia G-K, Zhang X-H, Wei Z-W, Zhu J-T, Yu J, Chen W, He Y, Schwarz R E, Brekken R A, Awasthi N, Zhang C-H
Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
Gastric Cancer Center, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
Oncogene. 2017 Sep 7;36(36):5122-5133. doi: 10.1038/onc.2017.108. Epub 2017 May 8.
The molecular mechanism underlying gastric cancer (GC) invasion and metastasis is still poorly understood. In this study, we tried to investigate the roles of CXCR4 and CXCR2 signalings in gastric cancer metastasis. A highly invasive gastric cancer cell model was established. Chemokines receptors were profiled to search for the accountable ones. Then the underlying molecular mechanism was investigated using both in vitro and in vivo techniques, and the clinical relevance of CXCR4 and CXCR2 expression was studied in gastric cancer samples. CXCR4 and CXCR2 were highly expressed in a high invasive gastric cancer cell model and in gastric cancer tissues. Overexpression of CXCR4 and CXCR2 was associated with more advanced tumor stage and poorer survival for GC patients. CXCR4 and CXCR2 expression strongly correlated with each other in the way that CXCR2 expression changed accordingly with the activity of CXCR4 signaling and CXCR4 expression also changed in agreement with CXCR2 activity. Further studies demonstrated CXCR4 and CXCR2 can both activated NF-κB and STAT3 signaling, while NF-κBp65 can then transcriptionally activate CXCR4 and STAT3 can activate CXCR2 expression. This crosstalk between CXCR4 and CXCR2 contributed to EMT, migration and invasion of gastric cancer. Finally, Co-inhibition of CXCR4 and CXCR2 is more effective in reducing gastric cancer metastasis. Our results demonstrated that CXCR4 and CXCR2 cross-activate each other to promote the metastasis of gastric cancer.
胃癌侵袭和转移的分子机制仍未完全明确。在本研究中,我们试图探究CXCR4和CXCR2信号通路在胃癌转移中的作用。建立了一种高侵袭性的胃癌细胞模型。对趋化因子受体进行分析以寻找相关受体。然后利用体外和体内技术研究其潜在的分子机制,并在胃癌样本中研究CXCR4和CXCR2表达的临床相关性。CXCR4和CXCR2在高侵袭性胃癌细胞模型和胃癌组织中高表达。CXCR4和CXCR2的过表达与胃癌患者更晚期的肿瘤分期和更差的生存率相关。CXCR4和CXCR2的表达彼此密切相关,即CXCR2的表达随CXCR4信号通路的活性相应变化,CXCR4的表达也随CXCR2的活性一致变化。进一步研究表明,CXCR4和CXCR2均可激活NF-κB和STAT3信号通路,而NF-κBp65随后可转录激活CXCR4,STAT3可激活CXCR2的表达。CXCR4和CXCR2之间的这种相互作用促进了胃癌的上皮-间质转化、迁移和侵袭。最后,联合抑制CXCR4和CXCR2在减少胃癌转移方面更有效。我们的结果表明,CXCR4和CXCR2相互交叉激活以促进胃癌转移。