Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 8 pp 6823—6851
Intracellular Insulin-like growth factor binding protein 2 (IGFBP2) contributes to the senescence of keratinocytes in psoriasis by stabilizing cytoplasmic p21
- 1 Laboratory of Experimental Immunology, IDI-IRCCS, Fondazione Luigi M. Monti, Rome, Italy
- 2 Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Biology, IDI-IRCCS, Fondazione Luigi M. Monti, Rome, Italy
- 3 V Dermatology Division, IDI-IRCCS, Fondazione Luigi M. Monti, Rome, Italy
- 4 Department of Medicine, Section of Dermatology, University of Verona, Verona, Italy
Received: October 23, 2019 Accepted: March 9, 2020 Published: April 17, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103045How to Cite
Copyright © 2020 Mercurio et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Psoriasis is a chronic Th1/Th17 lymphocytes-mediated inflammatory skin disease, in which epidermal keratinocytes exhibit a peculiar senescent state, resistance to apoptosis and the acquisition of senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). SASP consists of the release of soluble factors, including IGFBPs, that exert extracellular and intracellular functions in IGF-dependent or independent manner.
In this report, we investigated the expression and function of IGFBP2 in senescent keratinocytes isolated from the skin of patients with plaque psoriasis. We found that IGFBP2 is aberrantly expressed and released by these cells in vivo, as well as in vitro in keratinocyte cultures undergoing progressive senescence, and it associates with the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors p21 and p16 expression. For the first time, we provide evidence for a dual action of IGFBP2 in psoriatic keratinocytes during growth and senescence processes. While extracellular IGFBP2 counter-regulates IGF-induced keratinocyte hyper-proliferation, intracellular IGFBP2 inhibits apoptosis by interacting with p21 and protecting it from ubiquitin-dependent degradation. Indeed, we found that cytoplasmic p21 sustains anti-apoptotic processes, by inhibiting pro-caspase 3 cleavage and JNK phosphorylation in senescent psoriatic keratinocytes. As a consequence, abrogation of p21, as well as that of IGFBP2, found to stabilize cytoplasmic p21 levels, lead to the restoration of apoptosis mechanisms in psoriatic keratinocytes, commonly observed in healthy cells.