Abstract
Liver metastasis (LM) severely affects gastric cancer (GC) patients’ prognosis. Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) play key roles in intercellular communication. Specific sEV-miRNAs from several types of cancer were found to induce a premetastatic niche in target organs before tumor cell arrive. However, whether the primary GC affects hepatic microenvironment or the role of sEV-miRNAs in GC-LM is yet unclear. We report that GC-derived sEVs are primarily absorbed by Kupffer cells (KCs). sEV-miR-151a-3p is highly expressed in GC-LM patients’ plasma and presents poor prognosis. Treating mice with sEVs-enriched in miR-151a-3p promotes GC-LM, whereas has no influence on the proliferation of GC cells in situ. Mechanistically, sEV-miR-151a-3p inhibits SP3 in KCs. Simultaneously, sEV-miR-151a-3p targets YTHDF3 to decrease the transcriptional inhibitory activity of SP3 by reducing SUMO1 translation in a N6-methyladenosine-dependent manner. These factors contribute to TGF-β1 transactivation in KCs, subsequently activating the SMAD2/3 pathway and enhancing the stem cell-like properties of incoming GC cells. Furthermore, sEV-miR-151a-3p induces miR-151a-3p transcription in KCs to form a positive feedback loop. In summary, our results reveal a previously unidentified regulatory axis initiated by sEV-miR-151a-3p that establishes a hepatic stemness-permissive niche to support GC-LM. sEV-miR-151a-3p could be a promising diagnostic biomarker and preventive treatment candidate for GC-LM.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 50 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $5.18 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on SpringerLink
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The sEV-miRNA-seq and mRNA-seq data that support the findings of this study have been deposited in the SRA database from NCBI with the accession code PRJNA648286. The YTHDF3-CLIP-seq and YTHDF3-RIP-seq and meRIP-seq were downloaded from GEO database with the dataset ID: GSE86214; GSE130171; GSE130172. All other data are available in the article and its additional files or from the corresponding author upon request.
References
Bray F, Ferlay J, Soerjomataram I, Siegel RL, Torre LA, Jemal A. Global cancer statistics 2018: GLOBOCAN estimates of incidence and mortality worldwide for 36 cancers in 185 countries. CA Cancer J Clin. 2018;68:394–424.
Chen J, Tang Z, Dong X, Gao S, Fang H, Wu D, et al. Radiofrequency ablation for liver metastasis from gastric cancer. Eur J Surg Oncol. 2013;39:701–6.
Luo Z, Rong Z, Huang C. Surgery strategies for gastric cancer with liver metastasis. Front Oncol. 2019;9:1353.
Paget S. The distribution of secondary growths in cancer of the breast. 1889. Cancer Metastasis Rev. 1989;8:98–101.
Liu Y, Gu Y, Han Y, Zhang Q, Jiang Z, Zhang X, et al. Tumor exosomal RNAs promote lung pre-metastatic niche formation by activating alveolar epithelial TLR3 to recruit neutrophils. Cancer Cell. 2016;30:243–56.
Fong MY, Zhou W, Liu L, Alontaga AY, Chandra M, Ashby J, et al. Breast-cancer-secreted miR-122 reprograms glucose metabolism in premetastatic niche to promote metastasis. Nat Cell Biol. 2015;17:183–94.
Liu C, Guo J, Tian F, Yang N, Yan F, Ding Y, et al. Field-free isolation of exosomes from extracellular vesicles by microfluidic viscoelastic flows. ACS Nano. 2017;11:6968–76.
Huang X, Yuan T, Liang M, Du M, Xia S, Dittmar R, et al. Exosomal miR-1290 and miR-375 as prognostic markers in castration-resistant prostate cancer. Eur Urol. 2015;67:33–41.
Zhang L, Zhang S, Yao J, Lowery FJ, Zhang Q, Huang WC, et al. Microenvironment-induced PTEN loss by exosomal microRNA primes brain metastasis outgrowth. Nature. 2015;527:100–4.
Costa-Silva B, Aiello NM, Ocean AJ, Singh S, Zhang H, Thakur BK, et al. Pancreatic cancer exosomes initiate pre-metastatic niche formation in the liver. Nat Cell Biol. 2015;17:816–26.
Hashimoto K, Ochi H, Sunamura S, Kosaka N, Mabuchi Y, Fukuda T, et al. Cancer-secreted hsa-miR-940 induces an osteoblastic phenotype in the bone metastatic microenvironment via targeting ARHGAP1 and FAM134A. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2018;115:2204–9.
Peinado H, Aleckovic M, Lavotshkin S, Matei I, Costa-Silva B, Moreno-Bueno G, et al. Melanoma exosomes educate bone marrow progenitor cells toward a pro-metastatic phenotype through MET. Nat Med. 2012;18:883–91.
Colletti M, Tomao L, Galardi A, Paolini A, Di Paolo V, De, Stefanis C, et al. Neuroblastoma-secreted exosomes carrying miR-375 promote osteogenic differentiation of bone-marrow mesenchymal stromal cells. J Extracell Vesicles. 2020;9:1774144.
Zhang H, Deng T, Liu R, Bai M, Zhou L, Wang X, et al. Exosome-delivered EGFR regulates liver microenvironment to promote gastric cancer liver metastasis. Nat Commun. 2017;8:15016.
Yue C, Chen X, Li J, Yang X, Li Y, Wen Y. miR-151-3p inhibits proliferation and invasion of colon cancer cell by targeting close homolog of L1. J Biomed Nanotechnol. 2020;16:876–84.
Li X, Liu Y, Zhang X, Shen J, Xu R, Liu Y, et al. Circular RNA hsa_circ_0000073 contributes to osteosarcoma cell proliferation, migration, invasion and methotrexate resistance by sponging miR-145-5p and miR-151-3p and upregulating NRAS. Aging (Albany NY). 2020;12:14157–73.
Yeh TC, Huang TT, Yeh TS, Chen YR, Hsu KW, Yin PH, et al. miR-151-3p targets TWIST1 to repress migration of human breast cancer cells. PLoS One. 2016;11:e0168171.
Liu H, Cheng Y, Xu Y, Xu H, Lin Z, Fan J, et al. The inhibition of tumor protein p53 by microRNA-151a-3p induced cell proliferation, migration and invasion in nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Biosci Rep. 2019;39:BSR20191357.
Zhang Z, Yin J, Lu C, Wei Y, Zeng A, You Y. Exosomal transfer of long non-coding RNA SBF2-AS1 enhances chemoresistance to temozolomide in glioblastoma. J Exp Clin Cancer Res. 2019;38:166.
Lima CR, Gomes CC, Santos MF. Role of microRNAs in endocrine cancer metastasis. Mol Cell Endocrinol. 2017;456:62–75.
Ma G, Song G, Zou X, Shan X, Liu Q, Xia T, et al. Circulating plasma microRNA signature for the diagnosis of cervical cancer. Cancer Biomark. 2019;26:491–500.
Hsu KW, Fang WL, Huang KH, Huang TT, Lee HC, Hsieh RH, et al. Notch1 pathway-mediated microRNA-151-5p promotes gastric cancer progression. Oncotarget. 2016;7:38036–51.
Liu T, Xu H, Huang M, Ma W, Saxena D, Lustig RA, et al. Circulating glioma cells exhibit stem cell-like properties. Cancer Res. 2018;78:6632–42.
Celia-Terrassa T, Liu DD, Choudhury A, Hang X, Wei Y, Zamalloa J, et al. Normal and cancerous mammary stem cells evade interferon-induced constraint through the miR-199a-LCOR axis. Nat Cell Biol. 2017;19:711–23.
Grillet F, Bayet E, Villeronce O, Zappia L, Lagerqvist EL, Lunke S, et al. Circulating tumour cells from patients with colorectal cancer have cancer stem cell hallmarks in ex vivo culture. Gut. 2017;66:1802–10.
Lee D, Na J, Ryu J, Kim HJ, Nam SH, Kang M, et al. Interaction of tetraspan(in) TM4SF5 with CD44 promotes self-renewal and circulating capacities of hepatocarcinoma cells. Hepatology. 2015;61:1978–97.
Luzzi KJ, MacDonald IC, Schmidt EE, Kerkvliet N, Morris VL, Chambers AF, et al. Multistep nature of metastatic inefficiency: dormancy of solitary cells after successful extravasation and limited survival of early micrometastases. Am J Pathol. 1998;153:865–73.
Gao H, Chakraborty G, Lee-Lim AP, Mo Q, Decker M, Vonica A, et al. The BMP inhibitor Coco reactivates breast cancer cells at lung metastatic sites. Cell. 2012;150:764–79.
Ghajar CM, Peinado H, Mori H, Matei IR, Evason KJ, Brazier H, et al. The perivascular niche regulates breast tumour dormancy. Nat Cell Biol. 2013;15:807–17.
Hoshino A, Costa-Silva B, Shen TL, Rodrigues G, Hashimoto A, Tesic Mark M, et al. Tumour exosome integrins determine organotropic metastasis. Nature. 2015;527:329–35.
Ross S, Best JL, Zon LI, Gill G. SUMO-1 modification represses Sp3 transcriptional activation and modulates its subnuclear localization. Mol Cell. 2002;10:831–42.
Shi H, Wang X, Lu Z, Zhao BS, Ma H, Hsu PJ, et al. YTHDF3 facilitates translation and decay of N(6)-methyladenosine-modified RNA. Cell Res. 2017;27:315–28.
Chang G, Shi L, Ye Y, Shi H, Zeng L, Tiwary S, et al. YTHDF3 induces the translation of m(6)A-enriched gene transcripts to promote breast cancer brain metastasis. Cancer Cell. 2020;38:857–71.e857.
Li A, Chen YS, Ping XL, Yang X, Xiao W, Yang Y, et al. Cytoplasmic m(6)A reader YTHDF3 promotes mRNA translation. Cell Res. 2017;27:444–7.
Chen L, Xiao Z, Meng Y, Zhao Y, Han J, Su G, et al. The enhancement of cancer stem cell properties of MCF-7 cells in 3D collagen scaffolds for modeling of cancer and anti-cancer drugs. Biomaterials. 2012;33:1437–44.
Ikushima H, Todo T, Ino Y, Takahashi M, Miyazawa K, Miyazono K. Autocrine TGF-beta signaling maintains tumorigenicity of glioma-initiating cells through Sry-related HMG-box factors. Cell Stem Cell. 2009;5:504–14.
Badiola I, Olaso E, Crende O, Friedman SL, Vidal-Vanaclocha F. Discoidin domain receptor 2 deficiency predisposes hepatic tissue to colon carcinoma metastasis. Gut. 2012;61:1465–72.
Grunwald B, Harant V, Schaten S, Fruhschutz M, Spallek R, Hochst B, et al. Pancreatic premalignant lesions secrete tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-1, which activates hepatic stellate cells via CD63 signaling to create a premetastatic niche in the liver. Gastroenterology. 2016;151:1011–24.e1017.
Dou C, Liu Z, Tu K, Zhang H, Chen C, Yaqoob U, et al. P300 acetyltransferase mediates stiffness-induced activation of hepatic stellate cells into tumor-promoting myofibroblasts. Gastroenterology. 2018;154:2209–21.e2214.
O’Dea KP, Tan YY, Shah S, VP B, CT K, Wilson MR, et al. Monocytes mediate homing of circulating microvesicles to the pulmonary vasculature during low-grade systemic inflammation. J Extracell Vesicles. 2020;9:1706708.
Qiu X, Li Z, Han X, Zhen L, Luo C, Liu M, et al. Tumor-derived nanovesicles promote lung distribution of the therapeutic nanovector through repression of Kupffer cell-mediated phagocytosis. Theranostics. 2019;9:2618–36.
Kan Z, Ivancev K, Lunderquist A, McCuskey PA, McCuskey RS, Wallace S. In vivo microscopy of hepatic metastases: dynamic observation of tumor cell invasion and interaction with Kupffer cells. Hepatology. 1995;21:487–94.
Matsumura H, Kondo T, Ogawa K, Tamura T, Fukunaga K, Murata S, et al. Kupffer cells decrease metastasis of colon cancer cells to the liver in the early stage. Int J Oncol. 2014;45:2303–10.
Wen SW, Ager EI, Christophi C. Bimodal role of Kupffer cells during colorectal cancer liver metastasis. Cancer Biol Ther. 2013;14:606–13.
Leek RD, Landers RJ, Harris AL, Lewis CE. Necrosis correlates with high vascular density and focal macrophage infiltration in invasive carcinoma of the breast. Br J Cancer. 1999;79:991–5.
Lissbrant IF, Stattin P, Wikstrom P, Damber JE, Egevad L, Bergh A. Tumor associated macrophages in human prostate cancer: relation to clinicopathological variables and survival. Int J Oncol. 2000;17:445–51.
Brodt P. Role of the microenvironment in liver metastasis: from pre- to prometastatic niches. Clin Cancer Res. 2016;22:5971–82.
Kennett SB, Udvadia AJ, Horowitz JM. Sp3 encodes multiple proteins that differ in their capacity to stimulate or repress transcription. Nucleic Acids Res. 1997;25:3110–17.
Stielow B, Kruger I, Diezko R, Finkernagel F, Gillemans N, Kong-a-San J, et al. Epigenetic silencing of spermatocyte-specific and neuronal genes by SUMO modification of the transcription factor Sp3. PLoS Genet. 2010;6:e1001203.
Rosonina E, Akhter A, Dou Y, Babu J, Sri, Theivakadadcham VS. Regulation of transcription factors by sumoylation. Transcription. 2017;8:220–31.
Zhang Z, Du J, Wang S, Shao L, Jin K, Li F, et al. OTUB2 promotes cancer metastasis via hippo-independent activation of YAP and TAZ. Mol Cell. 2019;73:7–21.e27.
Zhang Y, Wang X, Zhang X, Wang J, Ma Y, Zhang L, et al. RNA-binding protein YTHDF3 suppresses interferon-dependent antiviral responses by promoting FOXO3 translation. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2019;116:976–81.
Gonzalez-Ramos M, Calleros L, Lopez-Ongil S, Raoch V, Griera M, Rodriguez-Puyol M, et al. HSP70 increases extracellular matrix production by human vascular smooth muscle through TGF-beta1 up-regulation. Int J Biochem Cell Biol. 2013;45:232–42.
Little AC, Pathanjeli P, Wu Z, Bao L, Goo LE, Yates JA, et al. IL-4/IL-13 stimulated macrophages enhance breast cancer invasion via Rho-GTPase regulation of synergistic VEGF/CCL-18 signaling. Front Oncol. 2019;9:456.
Yeh HW, Hsu EC, Lee SS, Lang YD, Lin YC, Chang CY, et al. PSPC1 mediates TGF-beta1 autocrine signalling and Smad2/3 target switching to promote EMT, stemness and metastasis. Nat Cell Biol. 2018;20:479–91.
Cui X, Morales RT, Qian W, Wang H, Gagner JP, Dolgalev I, et al. Hacking macrophage-associated immunosuppression for regulating glioblastoma angiogenesis. Biomaterials. 2018;161:164–78.
Zhang X, Liu L, Deng X, Li D, Cai H, Ma Y, et al. MicroRNA 483-3p targets Pard3 to potentiate TGF-beta1-induced cell migration, invasion, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition in anaplastic thyroid cancer cells. Oncogene. 2019;38:699–715.
Wang Y, Tu K, Liu D, Guo L, Chen Y, Li Q, et al. p300 acetyltransferase is a cytoplasm-to-nucleus shuttle for SMAD2/3 and TAZ nuclear transport in transforming growth factor beta-stimulated hepatic stellate cells. Hepatology. 2019;70:1409–23.
Bragado P, Estrada Y, Parikh F, Krause S, Capobianco C, Farina HG, et al. TGF-beta2 dictates disseminated tumour cell fate in target organs through TGF-beta-RIII and p38alpha/beta signalling. Nat Cell Biol. 2013;15:1351–61.
Liu B, Shyr Y, Cai J, Liu Q. Interplay between miRNAs and host genes and their role in cancer. Brief Funct Genomics. 2018;18:255–66.
Kasar S, Underbayev C, Yuan Y, Hanlon M, Aly S, Khan H, et al. Therapeutic implications of activation of the host gene (Dleu2) promoter for miR-15a/16-1 in chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Oncogene. 2014;33:3307–15.
Massague J, Obenauf AC. Metastatic colonization by circulating tumour cells. Nature. 2016;529:298–306.
Vanharanta S, Massague J. Origins of metastatic traits. Cancer Cell. 2013;24:410–21.
Kobayashi A, Okuda H, Xing F, Pandey PR, Watabe M, Hirota S, et al. Bone morphogenetic protein 7 in dormancy and metastasis of prostate cancer stem-like cells in bone. J Exp Med. 2011;208:2641–55.
Acknowledgements
This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81871946, 82002558, 82072708); Special Foundation for National Science and Technology Basic Research Program of China (2019FY101104); the Primary Research & Development Plan of Jiangsu Province (BE2016786); the Program for Development of Innovative Research Team in the First Affiliated Hospital of NJMU; the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD, JX10231801); Jiangsu Key Medical Discipline (General Surgery) (ZDXKA2016005); Jiangsu Key Lab of Cancer Biomarkers, Prevention and Treatment, Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Personalized Medicine, Nanjing Medical University. We would like to express our gratitude to Dr Xiaofei Zhi and Dr Zheng Chen for their valuable advice on our study. We also thank Prof. Xinyu Xu for her help on FACS experiments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Z Xu planned and supervised this study, as well as provided most of the funding support. BL, YX, JL, and WW performed all the experiments. Z Xuan, CC, and TJ analyzed and interpreted the data. LF and LW drew the diagrams. ZL, ZH, and QL drafted the manuscript. LX, SQ, and LZ collected and sorted the clinical data of patients. DZ and HX provided clinical tissue samples and information.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Ethics approval and consent to participate
This study was approved by the Ethics Committee for Clinical Research of The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Li, B., Xia, Y., Lv, J. et al. miR-151a-3p-rich small extracellular vesicles derived from gastric cancer accelerate liver metastasis via initiating a hepatic stemness-enhancing niche. Oncogene 40, 6180–6194 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41388-021-02011-0
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41388-021-02011-0
This article is cited by
-
Nonylphenol promotes epithelial-mesenchymal transition in colorectal cancer cells by upregulating miR-151a-3p
Discover Oncology (2025)
-
Immune dynamics shaping pre-metastatic and metastatic niches in liver metastases: from molecular mechanisms to therapeutic strategies
Molecular Cancer (2024)
-
Pre-metastatic niche: formation, characteristics and therapeutic implication
Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy (2024)
-
Cancer-induced systemic pre-conditioning of distant organs: building a niche for metastatic cells
Nature Reviews Cancer (2024)
-
HDAC5-mediated exosomal Maspin and miR-151a-3p as biomarkers for enhancing radiation treatment sensitivity in hepatocellular carcinoma
Biomaterials Research (2023)