Elevated circulating CCL2 in prostate cancer patients.

Abstract

201 Background: Monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (CCL2 or MCP-1), a chemokine secreted by monocytic cells, is critical in recruiting Treg and MDSCs into the tumor microenvironment and in regulating prostate cancer (PCa) migration and proliferation. In this study, we examined circulating CCL2 levels in healthy vs PCa patients and used an in vitro coculture model to identify the source of the elevated CCL2. Methods: Serum CCL2 concentrations were evaluated via ELISA in 59 patients (19 health controls, 20 “treatment naïve” PCa, 20 mCRPC). Monocytic leukemia cells (U937) were either directly cocultured with PC3 PCa cell line or cultured in the PC3 conditioned medium (CM). The induction of CCL2 mRNA in the cultures was examined by qPCR. The secretion of CCL2 into cell culture supernatants was evaluated via human cytokine array. Neutralizing antibodies to several overexpressed inflammatory cytokines in PC3 cells were added into the PC3 CM to evaluate the contribution of these inflammatory cytokines to CCL2 induction. Results: Circulating CCL2 concentrations were significantly higher in prostate cancer patient serum compared to control patient serum (p=4.4e-6) (Table). To understand the potential source of elevated CCL2, we grew U937 and PC3 in coculture and evaluated with qPCR, revealing that while CCL2 was not expressed in PC3 cells, it was expressed at very low levels in U937 cells. Interestingly, coculture of PC3 with U937 increased CCL2 mRNA expression by over 10-fold, and the result was confirmed at protein levels by human cytokine array. Our results also indicated that IL-6 and GM-SCF were the two major cytokines released by PCa cells to induce CCL2 mRNA in U937 cells and MEK and JAK-STAT signaling were crucial for CCL2 induction. Conclusions: Prostate cancer cells induce CCL2 secretion from monocytes in an IL-6 and GM-CSF dependent manner. Given the critical role of CCL2 in mediating immunosuppressive tumor microenvironments, our study highlighted the CCL2 Concentrations in PCa vs Healthy Serum.[Table: see text]