Background
Pancreatic cancer is a solid malignancy which is generally characterized by a poor prognosis. The radical resection of pancreatic tumors, especially in the stage of precursor lesions, may be the only hope for cure [
1]. However, even after surgical resection, the 5-year survival is only 20 % due to its high recurrence rate [
2], in addition, radiotherapy and chemotherapy obtain little benefit [
3]. Vascular invasion and distant metastasis are the critical features in the aggressive phenotype of pancreatic cancer.
As solid tumors growing, their microenviromental condition becomes gradually hypoxic. Under conditions of hypoxia, a signaling pathway involving a crucial oxygen response regulator, defined hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF), is turned on [
4]. Misregulation of HIF protein, especially HIF-1α and HIF-2α, is correlation with tumor development and metastasis [
5]. Substantial experiments were carried out to determine the role and mechanism of HIF-1α in various tumors. In contrast with HIF-1α, which is expressed in most metazoan species, the expression of HIF-2α is observed in certain cell types of vertebrate species [
6]. Indeed, HIF-2α has been proved to play an important role in many aspects of digestive cancers, containing proliferation, angiogenesis metabolism, metastasis and resistance to chemotherapy [
7].
Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a dedifferentiation process, which plays an integral role in tumor progression [
8]. In the process of EMT, cells acquired mesenchymal characteristics and lost epithelial phenotypes, mainly involved in mesenchymal marker upregulation, epithelial maker downregulation and cell polarity loss [
8,
9]. Loss of E-cadherin plays a key role in the EMT differentiation process and leads to increase cellular motility and invasion. As a main EMT-mediated transcription factor, twist reportedly contributes to cadherin switching. Interestingly, twist is a member of the basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor family and structural similarity with HIF at the bHLH [
10,
11]. The function of HIF and Twist may have some similarity. Research has been demonstrated that Twist is correlated with metastasis of multiple malignant tumors of epithelial origin [
12] and involves in the regulation of EMT [
10,
13].
Related hypoxia factors play a crucial role in EMT [
14], however, there is little evidence to clarify the role of HIF-2α in EMT in pancreatic cancer. In this study, we examined the expression of HIF-2α and E-cadherin in pancreatic cancer, as well as the correlation to the clinicopathologic characteristics. Then we investigated the role of HIF-2α in EMT process in pancreatic cancer cells. Finally, we tested the relation of HIF-2α and EMT related proteins and determined whether HIF-2α regulated EMT through Twist regulating the expression of E-cadherin.
Methods
Clinical samples
Tumor tissues of 70 patients were obtained from the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University from 2011 to 2013. Formalin-fixed tumor tissues were used for immunohistochemistry (IHC), including tumor samples and matching adjacent non-tumor tissues. Detailed clinicopathological data were recorded, including each patient’s age, gender, tumor size, tumor differentiation, and lymph node metastasis, and tumor clinical stages were classified according to the UICC staging system. None of the patients received chemotherapy, radiotherapy or immunotherapy before surgery. All the samples were obtained following patient consent and approval by the Ethics Committee of Soochow University.
Expression plasmids and HIF-2α gene silencing
Full-length HIF-2α complementary DNA (cDNA) was amplified by normal human embryo cDNA, digested with XhoI/EcoRIand subcloned into pcDNA3.1 vectors (OE-HIF-2α). The empty pcDNA3.1 vectors served as a negative control (Vector). The small interfering RNA (siRNA) was constructed by GeneChem Co., Ltd. (Shanghai, China). The siRNA sequence targeting HIF-2α (si-HIF-2α) was 5′-GCAAATGTACCCAATGATA-3′, as confirmed by sequencing. A nonspecific scrambled siRNA sequence (si-Scramble) was used as a negative control (target sequence 5′- GTTCTCCGAACGTGTCACGT-3′).
Cell culture and transfection
The pancreatic cancer cell lines of AsPC-1, CaPan-2, PaTu8988, SW1990, BXPC-3 were obtained from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Shanghai, China). The cells were maintained with DMEM (HyClone, Shanghai, China) supplemented with 10 % fetal bovine serum (FBS, HyClone, Shanghai, China) and cultured at 37 °C in a humidified atmosphere containing 5 % CO2. SW1990 and AsPC-1 cell expressing OE-HIF-2α or si-HIF-2α were performed by Lipofectamine 2000 (Invitrogen, CA, USA).
Western blot
Cells were collected and lysed in lysis buffer on ice. Total proteins were separated by 10 % SDS-PAGE and blotted on PVDF membrane. Membranes were blocked with 10 % non-fat milk powder at room temperature for 2 h and incubated with primary antibodies: anti-HIF2α (1:200), anti-VE-cadherin (1:1000), anti-MMP2 (1:1000), anti-MMP9 (1:5000), anti-Twist1 (1:200), anti-Twist2 (1:50) (all from Abcam, Cambridge, UK) and anti-GAPDH (1:1000, Santa Cruz Biotechnology, CA, USA), at 4̊C overnight. After three washes, the membranes were incubated with a horseradish peroxidase-conjugated goat anti-mouse IgG (1:2000; Santa Cruz Biotechnology). Reactive bands were detected using ECL western blotting detection reagent (GE Healthcare, USA).
Wound healing assay
Cells from each group were incubated in 6-well plates. A small wound area was made in the confluent monolayer with a 200 μl pipette tip in a lengthwise stripe. The cells were washed twice with PBS and incubated at 37̊C. The speed of wound closure was monitored after 24 and 48 h by measuring the ratio of the distance of the wound at 0 h. Wound width was measured at 100× magnifiation using a microscope (Leica Microsystems, Mannheim, Germany). Each experiment was performed in triplicate.
Cell invasion assay
Cell invasion was performed in Transwell cell culture chambers with 8 μm pores (Corning, NY,USA). The inserts in the membrane filter were coated with Matrigel on the upper surface. Cells at concentration of 5 × 105/ml resuspended in serum-free DMEM were placed on the upper chamber, while the lower chamber was filled with DMEM with 10%FBS. After incubation at 37 °C for 48 h, the cells on the upper surface of the filter were removed with a cotton swab. Invading cells at the bottom of Matrigel were fixed in methanol and stained with 0.1 % crystal violet. The number of invading cells was counted under a microscope at 200 × magnification of 5 random fields per well. Each experiment was performed in triplicate.
Chromatin immunoprecipitation assay
Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assay was performed using a ChIP assay kit (Upstate Biotechnology, LP, USA) as described by the manufacturer. AsPC-1 cells were lysed, and the immunoprecipitation was performed with anti-Twist1 polyclonal antibody (Santa Cruz Biotechnology, CA, USA), anti-Twist2 monoclonal antibody (Abcam, Cambridge, UK) or mouse immunoglobulin G (IgG; negative control). Following the wash, the antibody-protein-DNA complex was eluted from the beads and reversed cross-link incubation. After removed protein and RNA, purified DNA was subjected to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with primers specific for human E-cadehrin promoter. The primers for PCR were as follows: P1: F: 5′- GAACCCAAGAGGCGAAGG-3′ and R: 5′-GGTGCTGGACATTGAAGATTACT − 3′(154 bp); P2: F: 5′-GCCAGGATGGTCTCAATCTC-3′ and R: 5′-CTCCCTATGCTGTTGTGGG-3′(194 bp).
Immunohistochemistry (IHC)
Serial sections (4 μm) subjected to immunohistological staining were fixed with freshly prepared 3 % H2O2 with 0.1 % sodium azide to quench endogenous peroxidase and then treated with antigen retrieval solution for 15 min. After placing in blocking reagent for 15 min, the sections were incubated in primary anti-HFI-2α (1:500, Abcam), anti-E-cadherin (1:1000, Abcam), anti-Twist1 (1:500, Abcam) and anti-Twist2 (1:350, Abcam) monoclonal antibody overnight at 4 °C, followed by incubation with the secondary antibody and Extravidin-conjugated horseradish peroxidase. The staining intensity was scored as: 0 (<10 %), 1 (10–50 %), 2 (>50 %). The final score was calculated by multiplication of the intensity score the quantity score. A score ≥ 2 was considered to represent positive expression.
Statistical analysis
All data in the study were evaluated with SPSS version 18.0 software. Data were presented as mean ± SD. Continuous variables were compared one-way analysis of variance (oneway ANOVA) and categorical variable were compared by Chi-square test. Correlation analysis was performed using Spearman analysis. Difference was considered significant at values of P < 0.05.
Discussion
As a most deadly gastrointestinal carcinoma, pancreatic cancer leads to a hypoxic environment because of its rapidly growth and plentiful oxygen demand. HIF-2α is confined to the cell nucleus and expresses only under the condition of hypoxic stimulation. A better understanding the molecular mechanism of HIF-2α may be benefit to explore new promising therapeutic strategies for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. In our present study, we examined the expression of HIF-2α in 70 matched clinical pancreatic cancer tissues. The results showed that HIF-2α was overexpressed in pancreatic cancer tissues, and HIF-2α expression was correlated with poor differentiation, advanced clinical stage and lymph node metastasis. It suggested that overexpression of HIF-2α was frequently detected in patients with poor pathological characteristics.
Hypoxia is a common phenomenon in many tumors, especially in most types of human tumors, including breast, colon, ovarian, pancreatic, prostate, renal and hepatocellular cancers [
7,
16]. HIF-1α and HIF-2α are key transcription factors in tumor development and only accumulate in hypoxic tumors [
17,
18]. HIF-2α, as an important hypoxia-related factor, regulates the adaptive response to decreased O
2 availability at the cellular and organismal level [
7]. Previous report shows that HIF-2α is involved in the invasion and metastasis of gastric cancer cells under hypoxia [
19]. In our study, depletion of HIF-2α expression obviously inhibited the migration and invasion of AsPC-1 cells, and the opposite effect was shown in upregulation of HIF-2α in SW1990 cells. Thus, it was plausible to consider that HIF-2α promoted cell invasion and migration in pancreatic cancer.
EMT plays an important role in the development of tissues during embryogenesis, however, similar phenomena was found in pathological processes, including cancer [
20]. As the first stage of invasion and metastasis, EMT was reported involving in the development of many solid cancers, including gastric cancer [
21], colon cancer [
22] and breast cancer [
23]. Metastasis is a complex process, and it represents products of a multistep cell-biological process termed the invasion-metastasis cascade, which involves spread of cancer cells to distant organs and adaptation to their microenvironments [
24]. The mechanism between tumor cell plasticity and the EMT process may be the same and may thus have a similar relevance [
25].
Several pivotal proteins are necessary for the occurrence and progress of EMT in various cancers, among which E-cadherin is the most critical regulator. E-cadherin is a typical epithelial marker, and loss of E-cadherin is an important characteristic of occurrence of EMT [
26], the reason for this program is that loss of E-cadherin expression confuses cell polarity and also decreases the stability in epithelial cells. The expression of E-cadherin is regularly lost or decreased in advanced tumors and it is possibly linked to a higher incidence of metastasis and recurrence [
27]. Our present findings revealed that pancreatic cancer expressed obviously lower E-cadherin than matched adjacent non-tumor tissues and E-cadherin expression was negatively correlated with lymph node metastasis. It indicates that decreased E-cadherin level contributes to reduce the combining capacity and stability among pancreatic cancer cells, thus, it provides convenience for cells to metastasis. In our study, HIF-2α may induce EMT via decreasing the expression of E-cadherin. Meanwhile our study showed that overexpression of HIF-2α enhanced the expression of MMP2 and MMP9, which are closely related to tumor metastasis, are also significant to EMT [
28]. This result further confirmed that HIF-2α promoted EMT in pancreatic cancer. It seems reasonable that HIF-2α takes part in the development of pancreatic cancer through EMT to promote the invasion and metastasis of pancreatic cancer.
Twist1 and Twist2, as the main EMT-mediated process regulators, express high structural homology, and gene deletion tests have proved that two proteins share some similar effects and functions, such as their role in tumor progression and metastasis and their regulation of hematological malignancies [
29,
30]. Twist can reduce the expression of E-cadherin through binding to the two bipartite E-box motifs within E-cadherin promoter and inhibiting its transcription [
31], suggesting that Twist contributes to metastasis by promoting EMT. However, the mechanism of HIF-2α, Twist1/2 and E-cadherin is still poorly understood. In the present study, we found that Twist1, Twist2 and E-cadherin were regulated by HIF-2α in pancreatic cancer cells. Our further ChIP assay suggested that only Twist2 could bind to the promoter of E-cadherin in -714 bp region site, but there was no positive binding capacity in -295 bp promoter region site of E-cadherin. Twist1 had no similar effect on above-mentioned promoter region site of E-cadherin. Clinical tissues IHC staining showed that Twist2 and E-cadherin expression had an obviously negative correlation in pancreatic cancer tissues, however, it had no obvious correlation between Twist1 and E-cadherin. While Sun et.al indicated that Twist1 contributed to EMT process through down-regulation of E-cadherin expression in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) [
25]. Those studies along with our findings indicate that the function of Twist1/2 and E-cadherin in cancer progression depends on different tumor types. The accurate mechanism of how Twist1/2 affects the promoter capacity of E-cadherin is remained to be characterized.
Conclusion
In conclusion, our study demonstrated that HIF-2α was overexpressed in pancreatic cancer and associated with poor pathological characteristics. Our findings indicate that HIF-2α promotes EMT in vitro, at least in part by regulating Twist2/E-cadherin pathway. And whether blockage of HIF-2α may prove to be an effective therapeutic strategy in pancreatic cancer deserved further exploration.
Ethics approval and consent to participate
This study has been approved by the ethics committee of the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University. Patients who were enrolled in this study had signed the informed consent.
Competing interests
The authors have declared that they have no potential conflicts of interest.
Authors’ contributions
JY and JZ conceived and designed the experiments. JY, XZ and YZ carried out experiments. DMZ and LFZ participated in statistical analysis. YL, YBZ and DCL took part in interpretation of data. JY and JZ wrote this manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.