Journal
MOLECULAR ONCOLOGY
Volume 14, Issue 1, Pages 211-224Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/1878-0261.12598
Keywords
breast cancer; EMT; IL-22; invasion; malignancy; metastasis
Categories
Funding
- National Cancer Institute
- Clinical Immunology Laboratory research grant, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, North Chicago, IL, USA [CI-81382]
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Interleukin (IL)-22 is recognized as a tumor-supporting cytokine and is implicated in the proliferation of multiple epithelial cancers. In breast cancer, the current knowledge of IL-22 function is based on cell line models and little is known about how IL-22 affects the tumor initiation, proliferation, invasion, and metastasis in the in vivo system. Here, we investigated the tumor stage-specific function of IL-22 in disease development by evaluating the stage-by-stage progression of breast cancer in an IL-22 knockout spontaneous breast cancer mouse model. We found that among all the stages, IL-22 is specifically upregulated in tumor microenvironment (TME) during the malignant transformation stage of breast tumor progression. The deletion of IL-22 gene leads to the arrest of malignant transition stage, and reduced invasion and tumor burden. Administration of recombinant IL-22 in the TME does not influence in vivo tumor initiation and proliferation but only promotes malignant transformation of cancer cells. Mechanistically, deletion of IL-22 gene causes downregulation of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-associated transcription factors in breast tumors, suggesting EMT as the mechanism of regulation of malignancy by IL-22. Clinically, in human breast tumor tissues, increased number of IL-22(+) cells in the TME is associated with an aggressive phenotype of breast cancer. For the first time, this study provides an insight into the tumor stage-specific function of IL-22 in breast tumorigenesis.
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