The Hedgehog and Wnt/β-Catenin System Machinery Mediate
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Chen et al. Cell Death and Disease (2018) 9:639 DOI 10.1038/s41419-018-0692-9 Cell Death & Disease ARTICLE Open Access The hedgehog and Wnt/β-catenin system machinery mediate myofibroblast differentiation of LR-MSCs in pulmonary fibrogenesis Xiang Chen1,2, Chaowen Shi1,2, Honghui Cao1,2,LingChen1,2,JiweiHou1,2,ZouXiang3,KebinHu4 and Xiaodong Han1,2 Abstract Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic, progressive and fatal lung disease that is characterized by enhanced changes in stem cell differentiation and fibroblast proliferation. Resident mesenchymal stem cells (LR-MSCs) can undergo phenotype conversion to myofibroblasts to augment extracellular matrix production, impairing function and contributing to pulmonary fibrosis. Hedgehog and Wnt signaling are developmental signal cascades that play an essential role in regulating embryogenesis and tissue homeostasis. Recently, it has been reported that both hedgehog and Wnt signaling play important roles in pulmonary fibrogenesis. Thus, the identification of specific target regulators may yield new strategy for pulmonary fibrosis therapies. In our work, we demonstrated the critical role of Gli1, Wnt7b, Wnt10a and Fzd10 in the process of pulmonary fibrogenesis in vitro and in vivo. Gli1 was induced in LR-MSCs following TGF-β1 treatment and fibrotic lung tissues. Inhibition of Gli1 suppressed myofibroblast differentiation of LR- MSCs and pulmonary fibrosis, and decreased the expression of Wnt7b, Wnt10a and β-catenin. Gli1 bound to and β 1234567890():,; 1234567890():,; increased promoter activity of the Wnt7b and Wnt10a genes, and Wnt7b and Wnt10a were critical activators of Wnt/ - catenin signaling. It was noteworthy that Fzd10 knockdown reduced Wnt7b and Wnt10a-induced activation of Wnt/β- catenin signaling, which imply that Wnt7b and Wnt10a may be the ligands for Fzd10. Moreover, siRNA-mediated inhibition of Fzd10 prevented TGF-β1-induced myofibroblast differentiation of LR-MSCs in vitro and impaired bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis. We conclude that hedgehog and Wnt/β-catenin signaling play a critical role in promoting myofibroblast differentiation of LR-MSCs and development of pulmonary fibrosis. These findings elucidate a therapeutic approach to attenuate pulmonary fibrosis through targeted inhibition of Gli1 or Fzd10. Introduction In this process, the activated mesenchymal cells would lead Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic, pro- to the formation of fibroblastic/myofibroblastic foci and gressive and lethal disease of uncertain etiology1. It has been exaggerated accumulation of extracellular matrix (ECM), – reported that IPF may be a result of the migration, pro- resulting in irreversible destruction of the lung parenchyma2 liferation and activation of mesenchymal cells provoked by 4. The presence of fibroblastic/myofibroblastic foci is an the aberrant activation of alveolar epithelial cells after injury. important prognostic factor, as their numbers have been correlated with survival in IPF5,6.However,themolecular mechanisms of IPF remain poorly understood. Correspondence: Xiaodong Han ([email protected]) 1Immunology and Reproduction Biology Laboratory & State Key Laboratory of The Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway was found dys- Analytical Chemistry for Life Science, Medical School, Nanjing University, regulated in the lung tissues from patients with IPF7,8. Nanjing, Jiangsu 210093, China Wnt/β-catenin signaling has a profound effect on devel- 2Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Molecular Medicine, Nanjing 210093, China Full list of author information is available at the end of the article. opmental processes during embryogenesis and plays a key Edited by Y. Shi © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a linktotheCreativeCommons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Official journal of the Cell Death Differentiation Association Chen et al. Cell Death and Disease (2018) 9:639 Page 2 of 15 role for tissue homeostasis in adults9,10. Wnt proteins are pulmonary fibrosis in vitro and in vivo, and highlighted Gli1 a family of secreted molecules that transmit signal by and Fzd10 as a potential therapeutic target in pulmonary interacting with Frizzled receptors and low-density lipo- fibrosis. protein receptor-related protein co-receptors (LRP5/ 6)11,12, which results in β-catenin translocating to nucleus Results and binding with T-cell factor/lymphoid enhancer- LR-MSCs could differentiate into myofibroblasts in vivo binding factor (Tcf/Lef) to promote the transcription of The primary LR-MSCs from mouse lung tissues were Wnt target genes13. Wnt proteins have been found to be isolated by Magnetic-activated cell sorting (MACS) as expressed at low levels in the normal lung and may be previously reported. The purity of LR-MSCs was con- associated with epithelial turnover8,14. So far, aberrant firmed by the expression of CD90, CD44, CD106, CD29 activation of Wnt/β-catenin signaling that is mediated by and Sca-1, but not CD45 and CD31 (Fig. 1a). In our altered expressions of Wnt proteins has been reported to previous study, we found that LR-MSCs could differ- be implicated in various diseases, including renal, pul- entiate into myofibroblasts in the treatment of trans- – monary and liver fibrosis15 17. Emerging evidence showed forming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1; Fig. 1b)28.To that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) could influence the determine whether LR-MSCs have a fibrosis-inducing development of inflammation and injury model sys- role in pulmonary fibrosis, we performed fate-tracing tems18,19. MSCs could regulate fibroblast growth and experiment in a murine model of bleomycin (BLM)- collagen production through expressing paracrine factors, induced pulmonary fibrosis. To trace the fate of LR- like Wnt proteins20. However, the molecular mechanism MSCs, lung sections were double stained with Sca-1 (a of dysregulated Wnt proteins in pulmonary fibrogenesis marker of LR-MSCs) and α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA; remains enigmatic. a marker of myofibroblasts). Confocal imaging demon- Previous research has reported that hedgehog signaling strated that LR-MSCs undergo tremendous expansion, could induce the expression of Wnts through glioma- and acquire expression of α-SMA, indicating myofibro- associated oncogene homolog (GLI) family members blast differentiation of LR-MSCs in pulmonary fibrogen- – which could bind with the promoter area of Wnt genes21 esis (Fig. 1c). 23. In the development of IPF, hedgehog signaling is robustly activated, resulting in increased proliferation of Wnt genes were differentially expressed in myofibroblast- fibroblasts and ECM synthesis24. Hedgehog signal trans- differentiated LR-MSCs and fibrotic lungs duction is mediated by two transmembrane proteins: the To investigate the activity of Wnt/β-catenin signaling, hedgehog-binding receptor Patched-1 (PTC) and we first measured the expression of β-catenin in LR-MSCs Smoothened (SMO), and finally resulting in the activation treated with TGF-β1. We found that β-catenin was of GLI transcription factor family which induce the extensively expressed in the myofibroblast differentiation – expression of GLI downstream targets25 27. In the of LR-MSCs in vitro, which indicate the activation of absence of hedgehog ligand, GLI1 is not expressed, Wnt/β-catenin signaling (Fig. 2a, b). The results were whereas GLI2 and GLI3 are processed into, respectively, a additionally confirmed in the lung tissues derived from weak and a strong transcriptional repressor27. However, pulmonary fibrosis mouse model (Fig. 2c). Wnt/β-catenin + the relationship between aberrant expressed GLI and Wnt signaling was profoundly activated in LR-MSCs (Sca-1 ) remains poorly illuminated. in the development of pulmonary fibrosis (Fig. 2d). In the present study, we verified that Wnt signaling and In order to confirm the roles of Wnt family members hedgehog signaling were both activated in pulmonary that played in pulmonary fibrogenesis, we first performed fibrogenesis. Thus, we comprehensively characterized Wnt, a systematic analysis of the messenger RNA (mRNA) level Fzd and Gli gene expression patterns of myofibroblast- of 19 Wnt genes in both fibrotic mouse lung tissues and differentiated lung-resident mesenchymal stem cells (LR- myofibroblast-differentiated LR-MSCs. We found that 8 MSCs) and fibrotic lung tissues. We reported extremely Wnt genes (Wnt3, Wnt7a, Wnt7b, Wnt8a, Wnt8b, increased expression of Wnt7b/10a, Fzd9/10 and Gli1 in the Wnt9b, Wnt10a, Wnt11) were upregulated both in vitro differentiation of LR-MSCs and lung fibrosis. In particular, and in vivo (Fig. 3a, b). Among the 8 Wnt genes, Wnt7b we demonstrated that Wnt7b and Wnt10a could bind with and Wnt10a were especially overexpressed in vitro or Fzd10 to activate Wnt/β-catenin signaling. Targeted inhibi- in vivo. Moreover, it was ever reported that Wnt7b and tion of Fzd10 could evidently suppress