Multiple Roles of IL6 in Hepatic Injury, Steatosis, and Senescence Aggregate to Suppress Tumorigenesis.
Anat ShrikiTali LantonAmir SonnenblickOrr Levkovitch-SianyDana EidelshteinRinat AbramovitchNofar RosenbergOrit PappoSharona ElgavishYuval NevoRifaat SafadiAmnon PeledStefan Rose-JohnEithan GalunJonathan H AxelrodPublished in: Cancer research (2021)
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) typically develops on a background of chronic hepatitis for which the proinflammatory cytokine IL6 is conventionally considered a crucial driving factor. Paradoxically, IL6 also acts as a hepatoprotective factor in chronic liver injury. Here we used the multidrug-resistant gene 2 knockout (Mdr2-/-) mouse model to elucidate potential roles of IL6 in chronic hepatitis-associated liver cancer. Long-term analysis of three separate IL6/Stat3 signaling-deficient Mdr2-/- strains revealed aggravated liver injury with increased dysplastic nodule formation and significantly accelerated tumorigenesis in all strains. Tumorigenesis in the IL6/Stat3-perturbed models was strongly associated with enhanced macrophage accumulation and hepatosteatosis, phenotypes of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), as well as with significant reductions in senescence and the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) accompanied by increased hepatocyte proliferation. These findings reveal a crucial suppressive role for IL6/Stat3 signaling in chronic hepatitis-associated hepatocarcinogenesis by impeding protumorigenic NASH-associated phenotypes and by reinforcing the antitumorigenic effects of the SASP. SIGNIFICANCE: These findings describe a context-dependent role of IL6 signaling in hepatocarcinogenesis and predict that increased IL6-neutralizing sgp130 levels in some patients with NASH may herald early HCC development.See related commentary by Huynh and Ernst, p. 4671.
Keyphrases
- liver injury
- drug induced
- multidrug resistant
- mouse model
- dna damage
- endothelial cells
- escherichia coli
- adipose tissue
- signaling pathway
- cell proliferation
- risk assessment
- drug resistant
- type diabetes
- transcription factor
- cystic fibrosis
- dna methylation
- stress induced
- pseudomonas aeruginosa
- genome wide identification