Background
Metastasis is the main cause of deaths for patients with many solid cancers. Approximately 90% of deaths caused by cancers result from the metastatic spread of primary tumors [
1]. Therefore, it is critical to understand the mechanisms of metastasis and to identify new targets for therapy. Recently, two mechanisms of metastasis have received significant attention: (1) epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) and mesenchymal epithelial transition (MET) [
2‐
8] and (2) interactions between tumor cells and microenvironment [
9‐
15]. EMT is believed to be a major mechanism by which cancer cells become migratory and invasive. A variety of cancer cells display features of EMT. In addition, multiple steps of metastasis are influenced by the tumor microenvironment which may determine the course and severity of metastasis [
16‐
23] .
Hypoxia is a critical microenvironment in tumor pathogenesis. It occurs in series of distinct steps that include tumor cell invasion, intravasation, extravasation and proliferation. There is a close relationship between hypoxia and tumor metastasis and poor prognosis. Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain how hypoxia might lead to a poor prognosis in the clinical settings, and none of which are mutually exclusive [
4,
24‐
27].
This hypoxic response is mainly regulated by the hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1), a basic HLH transcription factor composed of two subunits, HIF-1α and HIF-1β. The HIF-1α subunit is regulated by oxygen tension, whereas HIF-1β is constitutively expressed [
28‐
32]. Over-expression of HIF-1α is a common feature of malignant cells and links to poor prognosis in both lymph-node positive [
33] and lymph-node negative [
34] breast carcinoma. Therefore, the exploration of target genes by HIF-1 may lead to a better understanding of the contribution of hypoxia to tumor progression.
HIF-1α activation correlates with metastasis in many kinds of tumors and promotes metastasis through the regulation of key factors governing tumor cell metastatic potential. E-cadherin is a key molecule related to metastatic potential in the majority of epithelial cancers. It is a cellular adhesion molecule that regulates cell–cell adhesion and stimulates anti-growth signals through interactions with β-catenin in cytoplasm [
35]. It has been proposed that HIF-1α mediates repression of E-cadherin expression through the upregulation of E-cadherin-specific repressors Snail and SIP1 [
36]. Similarly, hypoxia promotes EMT and metastatic phenotypes in human cancer cells via direct induction of the E-cadherin repressor twist [
2].
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common cancers worldwide. Invasion and metastasis in early-stage HCC is an important feature and a crucial unfavorable prognostic factor. Therefore, in this work we investigated how hypoxia could induce EMT and promote metastasis of HCC cells.
Methods
Immunohistochemistry
Human liver tissues were obtained from surgical resection specimens of HCC patients in the Institute of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University. The procedure of human sample collection was approved by the Ethical Committee of Third Military Medical University. A tissue microarray block containing 66 HCC tissues was constructed by using a tissue microarrayer. Immunostaining was performed on tissue microarray slides following the routine protocol. The following antibodies were used: mouse anti-human HIF-1α monoclonal antibody (BD Clontech, USA), mouse anti-human E-cadherin monoclonal antibody, mouse anti-human N-cadherin monoclonal antibody, mouse anti-human Vimentin monoclonal antibody, rabbit anti-human Twist polyclonal antibody and rabbit anti-human SNAI1 polyclonal antibody (Santa Cruz Biotech, USA). Assessment of the staining was based on the percentage of positively stained cells and the staining intensity.
Cell culture
Human HCC cell lines HepG2 and SMMC-7721 were purchased from Shanghai Cell Collection (Shanghai, China). Human embryonic kidney cell line HEK293 was obtained from Microbix Biosystems (Toronto, ON, Canada). The cells were cultured in Dulbecco’s modified Eagle’s medium supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS; GIBCO-BRL) at 37°C under a 5% CO2 condition. CoCl2 was purchased from Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis, USA).
Fluorescent immunostaining
Cells were cultured in 24-well plates at 5 × 104 cells per well. At the indicated time points, media were removed from the cultured cells followed by three washings with PBS. Cells were fixed with 4% polyoxymethylene solution for 20 min and washed with PBS three times. Cells were incubated with primary antibodies and then their corresponding lumophore-conjugated secondary antibodies. DAPI was used for nuclei staining. Finally, cells were observed under a fluorescent microscope or a confocal microscope.
The shRNA specifically targeting HIF-1α mRNA was generated by annealing the following primers: Forward: 5'-aGTCGGACAGCCTCACCAAAtttt-3'; Reverse: 5'-aTTTGGTGAGGCTGTCCGACtttt-3', followed by its insertion into pSES-HUS that was digested by SfiI to generate HIF-1α siRNA pSES-HUS. After digestion of PacI, HIF-1α siRNA pSES-HUS was transfected into E. Coli BJ5183 with pAdEasy-1 to obtain recombination plasmid pAdeasy-HIF-1α siRNA. After identification, pAdeasy-HIF-1α siRNA was transfected into HEK293 cells for the production of recombinant adenovirus Ad-HIF-1α siRNA (Ad-shHIF-1α). The control adenovirus containing a non-function shRNA (Ad-scrambled) (Forward: 5'-aGACTTCATAAGGCGCATGCtttt-3' Reverse: 5'-aGCATGCGCCTTATGAAGTCtttt-3') is constructed in a similar protocol. The adenoviruses were harvested and purified with the CsCl gradient centrifugation method. The titers of adenoviruses were quantified through TCID50 assay on HEK293 cells.
Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR)
The SMMC-7721 cells were harvested at the indicated time points. Total RNA was extracted by using Trizol (Invitrogen) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. Reverse transcription was performed according to the protocol of RevertAidTM First Strand cDNA Synthesis Kits (Fermentas). Quantitative PCR was performed by using SYBR premix Ex Taq (TaKaRa) and Applied Biosystems 7300 Real-Time PCR System (Applied Biosystems, USA) supplied with analytical software. The primers used for this study were listed in Additional file
1: Table S6.
Immunoblotting
Total proteins were separated on 8–12% polyacrylamide gels and transferred onto 0.45 μm nitrocellulose in a buffer containing 25 mmol/L Tris–HCl (pH 8.3), 192 mmol/L glycine, 20% methanol and blocked with 5% fat-free dry milk in PBS for 2 h. The membranes were incubated with primary antibodies, as described in Immunohistochemistry. β-actin was used as internal control.
Cell migration and invasion assays
The invasion assays were performed using Millicell inserts (Millipore, Billerica, MA, USA) coated with Matrigel (BD Biosciences, Sparks, MD, USA). 2.5 × 104 cells were seeded per upper chambers in serum-free DMEM whereas the lower chambers were loaded with DMEM containing 5% FBS. After 24 hrs, the non-migrating cells on the upper chambers were removed by a cotton swab, and cells invaded through the matrigel layer to the underside of the membrane were stained by crystal violet. The cell numbers were counted. Cell migration assays were performed similarly, but without Matrigel.
Cell cycle analysis
For identifying cells at different stages of cell cycle, vector infected cells were prepared as a single cell suspension of 1–2 × 106 cells/mL in PBS. After the cells were fixed with pre-cold 70% ethanol for 2 hrs, the cells were washed two times with PBS and were stained with Propidium Iodide (PI) at the final concentration of 50 μg/mL with RNase at 20 μg/mL in PBS. Treated cells were then evaluated by FACS analysis.
Colony formation assay was performed by using monolayer culture. Cells were plated in a 6-well plate and then cultured under hypoxic condition. Colonies (>50 cells/colony) were counted after staining with crystal violet solution. All the experiments were performed in triplicate wells three times.
Luciferase reporter vector construction
We used genomic DNA of human normal liver as template to amplify the promoter of SNAI1 gene. The sequences of primer sets were provided upon requested. The PCR products were digested by KpnI and XhoI, followed by being inserted into pGL3-basic. The resulting plasmids harboring various lengths of SNAI1 promoter were transfected into CoCl2-treated SMMC-7721 cells. The activity of luciferase was examined at the indicated time points.
Statistical analysis
Each experiment was performed at least two times. All values were presented as means ± SD. The statistics was analyzed by unpaired, two-tailed t-test. Data were considered to be statistically significant when p < 0.05 (*) and p < 0.01 (**).
Discussion
In this study, we found the increased expression of HIF-1α in HCC samples obtained from surgical resection. Ectopic expression profile of HIF-1α is correlated with poor prognosis and enhanced HCC invasion and metastasis. Further analysis showed that increased HIF-1α level was associated with loss of E-cadherin and overexpression of SNAI1, N-cadherin and Vimentin. Our data suggest that hypoxia may induce EMT of cancer cells in HCC.
To test this hypothesis, we treated HCC cells under hypoxic condition. We found that hypoxia could induce EMT in HCC cells and enhance cell migration and invasion. Furthermore, we found that induction of EMT by hypoxia was reversible when cells were returned to normoxic condition. In addition, we confirmed that hypoxia led to G
0/G
1 arrest of HCC cells, which is coincident with previous reports [
37‐
41]. CoCl
2-induced HIF-1α stabilization also promoted EMT in HCC cells. And shRNA-mediated HIF-1α suppression was able to prevent EMT. All these data confirm that HIF-1α is an important stimulatory factor of EMT process in HCC cells.
The downstream target genes regulated by HIF-1α are involved in angiogenesis, hypoxic metabolism, cancer cell survival and invasion [
10,
42‐
46]. HIF-1α is also documented to be an upstream regulatory factor of many EMT modulators, such as SNAI1, twist, Zeb1, SIP1 and LOX [
47]. Recent studies revealed that HIF-1α-induced LOX overexpression promoted the metastasis of breast cancers in a mouse model and was correlated with poor prognosis of ER negative patients [
48]. Response to hypoxia was also utilized in tumor therapy in the field of gene therapy. Oncolytic adenoviruses were shown to selectively and effectively proliferate in cancer cells, when its E1B gene expression was driven by HRE-modulated promoters [
49]. It is well demonstrated that SNAI1 is an inducer of EMT and it plays an important role in induction of EMT in HCC cells [
50,
51]. Thus, we investigated the potential effect of HIF-1α on SNAI1 expression.
Bioinformatics analysis on SNAI1 promoter identified two putative HREs, providing the possibility that HIF-1α can directly bind these sites and promoter SNAI1 transcription. Using luciferase report systems, we determined that vectors containing either of these two HREs had high luciferase activity in CoCl
2-treated HCC cells. The vector containing -651 bp HRE apparently had higher luciferase expression than that harboring -541 bp HRE. Previous study has shown that hypoxia could induce Snail expression during EMT [
52]. Recently, Luo et al. demonstrated that HIF could directly regulated mouse Snail expression [
53]. Furthermore, it was reported that hypoxia induced EMT in melanoma via regulation of Snail by HIF-2α [
54]. So we confirmed that HIF-1α promoted the transcription of one of central EMT-inducer, SNAI1, in hypoxia-simulating HCC model.
Collectively, we present our hypothesis of hypoxia participating in EMT of HCC cells (Figure
5C). In hypoxic conditions of the primary solid tumor, the oxygen required for proline hydroxylase activity is absent. HIF-1α in turn escapes proteolysis, allowing for its entry into the nucleus. Then, it can dimerize with HIF-1β to form the active transcription-stimulating complex, which binds HRE in SNAI1 promoter to promote SNAI1 expression. The tumor cells acquire mesenchymal phenotype, disseminate from the primary tumors, penetrate extracellular matrix (ECM) and enter blood or lymphatic vessels. As soon as some of these tumors cells penetrate ECM and enter the parenchyma of targeting tissues or organs on the condition of reoxygenation, HIF-1α is rapidly oxidized at either or both of two proline residues by a proline hydroxylase enzyme. This hydroxylation permits the binding of the von hippel-landau protein (pVHL) to HIF-1α. Once bound, HIF-1α is polyubiquitinated and subsequently degraded in the proteasome. Subsequently, the mesenchymal tumor cells undergo MET. HIF-1α may play a central role in EMT induced by hypoxia. HIF-1α-SNAI1-EMT may be one of the key signal pathways.
Conclusion
We found that in HCC, hypoxia-induced HIF-1α stabilization promoted SNAI1-mediated EMT process, and led to the enhanced HCC invasion and metastasis and poor prognosis of patients. Further investigations to illuminate the intimate mechanisms of hypoxia and reoxygenation inducing solid tumors metastasis may lead to new molecular therapies besides conventional treatments against malignant solid tumors.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by funds from National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (No. 81090423, 81020108026, 81000966 and 81101630) and National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, No.2010CB529406).
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors’ contributions
CQ, JD and XL designed the research studies. LZ, GH, YZ, YJ, JS, JZ, QW and XF carried out the experiments; CQ, LZ, JL and QW analyzed and interpreted the data; ZL, JL and CQ wrote the draft of the manuscript. All authors read and approved of the final manuscript.