Epidermal and hepatocyte growth factors stimulate chemotaxis in an intestinal epithelial cell line

The migration of intestinal cells is important in the development and maintenance of normal epithelium, in a process that may be regulated by growth factors and cytokines. Although a number of growth factor receptors are expressed by intestinal cells, little progress has been made toward assignment of functional roles for these ligand-receptor systems. This study compares several growth factors and cytokines for their chemoattraction of the mouse small intestinal epithelial cell line. Epidermal and hepatocyte growth factors stimulated a rapid 30-fold chemotaxis of cells with delayed threefold migration toward transforming growth factor-beta1. Despite stimulating proliferation, keratinocyte, fibroblast, or insulin-like growth factors did not stimulate directed migration. Chemotaxis required tyrosine kinase and phosphatidylinositol phospholipase C activities but not protein kinase C or mitogen-activated protein kinase activity. These findings suggest that the repertoire of growth factors capable of regulating directed intestinal epithelial cell migration is limited and that a divergence exists in the signal transduction pathways for directed vs. nondirected migration.