Epidermal (EGF) and hepatocyte (HGF) growth factors stimulate chemotaxis in an intestinal epithelial cell line

Polk, D. Brent, and Wei Tong. Epidermal and hepatocyte growth factors stimulate chemotaxis in an intestinal epithelial cell line. Am. J. Physiol. 277 (Cell Physiol. 46): C1149–C1159, 1999.—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-b1. 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.