CRABP-II enhances pancreatic cancer cell migration and invasion by stabilizing interleukin 8 expression

Our previous study shows that cellular retinoic acid binding protein II (CRABP-II) is overexpressed in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and pre-cancerous lesions, but not detected in normal pancreatic tissues. In this study, we show that deletion of CRABP-II in PDAC cells by CRISPR/Cas9 does not affect cancer cell proliferation, but decreases cell migration and invasion. Gene expression microarray analysis reveals that IL-8 is one of the top genes whose expression is down-regulated upon CRABP-II deletion, while expression of MMP-2 and MMP-14, two targets of IL-8 are also significantly down-regulated. Moreover, we found that CRABP-II is able to form a complex with HuR, which binds to the 3'UTR of IL-8 messenger RNA (mRNA) and enhances IL-8 mRNA stability. Ectopic expression of flag-CRABP-II in CRABP-II knockout cells is able to rescue the expression of IL-8, MMP-2/MMP-14 and recovers cell migration. Using the orthotopic xenograft model, we further demonstrate that CRABP-II deletion impairs tumor metastasis to nearby lymph nodes. Taken together, our results reveal a novel pathway linking CRABP-II expression to enhanced PDAC metastasis, and hence we propose CRABP-II may serve as a new PDAC therapeutic target.