Molecular Profiling of Keratinocyte Skin Tumors Links Overabundance and Increased Human β-Defensin-2 Expression to Growth Promotion of Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Overview

Journal Cancers (Basel)

Publisher MDPI

Specialty Oncology

Date 2020 Mar 1

PMID 32111012

Citations 27

Authors

Nandhitha Madhusudhan

Manuela R Pausan

Bettina Halwachs

Marija Durdevic

Markus Windisch

Jan Kehrmann

Vijaykumar Patra

Peter Wolf

Petra Boukamp

Christine Moissl-Eichinger

Lorenzo Cerroni

Jurgen C Becker

Gregor Gorkiewicz

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The skin microbiota plays a prominent role in health and disease; however, its contribution to skin tumorigenesis is not well understood. We comparatively assessed the microbial community compositions from excision specimens of the main human non-melanoma skin cancers, actinic keratosis (AK), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and basal cell carcinoma (BCC). Keratinocyte skin tumors are characterized by significantly different microbial community compositions, wherein AK and SCC are more similar to each other than to BCC. Notably, in SCC, which represents the advanced tumor entity and frequently develops from AK, overabundance of Staphylococcus aureus, a known skin pathogen, was noted. Moreover, S. aureus overabundance was significantly associated with increased human β-defensin-2 (hBD-2) expression in SCC. By challenging human SCC cell lines with , a specific induction of hBD-2 expression and increased tumor cell growth was seen. Increased proliferation was also induced by directly challenging SCC cells with hBD-2. Together, our data indicate that a changed microbial community composition in SCC, specified by overabundance, might promote tumor cell growth via modulation of hBD-2 expression.

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