Abstract
Purpose: :
Lumican is one of the major proteoglycan in human cornea. Lumican deficient knockout mice showed the loss of corneal opacity and delayed wound healing. Our purpose of this study is to define the role of Lumican on cornea epithelial cell migration.
Methods: :
Human cornea epithelial cells (HCE-T) were transfected with human lumican expression vector. Stable overexpression of lumican was confirmed using RT-PCR and Western blot. Cell migration assay was performed by Boyden chamber assay. The activation of ERK1/2, c-Jun, and ATF-2 was analyzed by Western blot. RT-PCR and Western blot were used to define the expression of Integrins and extracellular matrix proteins.
Results: :
Overexpression of human Lumican in HCE-T cells increased both cell migration and cell proliferation. Among the MAPK family, ERK1/2 and its upstream activator MEK were activated in Lumican overexpressed cells. When we treated ERK specific inhibitor U0126, cell migration was completely blocked. Integrin α2 and β1 were increase in Lumican overexpressed cells.
Conclusions: :
In this study, our results demonstrated that overexpression of Lumican induced cell migration and proliferation. These data provided evidence that Lumican may involved in cell migration of corneal epithelium through the activation of ERK1/2, and emphasize a new molecular mechanism for the signal pathway in the process of cornea epithelial cell migration.
Keywords: cornea: epithelium • proteoglycans/glycosaminoglycans