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Department of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology, University of Virginia Health Sciences, PO Box 800386, Charlottesville, Virginia 22908, USA
¹ Department of Microbiology, University of Virginia Health Sciences, PO Box 800734, Charlottesville, Virginia 22908, USA

(Requests for offprints should be addressed to P V Gordon; Email: pvg4n{at}virginia.edu)

Glucocorticoids induce hypertrophy of the neonatal ileal mucosa but the molecular mechanisms behind this growth induction remain poorly understood. Ileal epithelial cells (IECs) are dependent upon IGF-II for proliferation both in vivo and in culture. The type-2 IGF receptor (IGFR-2) is a lysosomal transport protein that attenuates IGF-II-driven growth and is highly abundant in the ileum. The cellular repressor of E1A-stimulated genes (CREG) is a secreted phosphoglycoprotein that affects cell fate via ligand binding with IGFR-2, although the mechanism by which it does so is unknown. We hypothesized that glucocorticoids might facilitate IGF-mediated hypertrophy through CREG-mediated degradation of IGFR-2. To test this hypothesis, confluent rat IECs (IEC-18) were cultured for 72 h with or without dexamethasone (DEX) and harvested for Western blot, immunocytochemistry, gene array and CREG immunoneutralization experiments. IGFR-2 and CREG immunohistochemistry were also performed in archived ileal specimens from control and DEX-exposed newborn mice and extremely premature infants to investigate in vivo and clinical relevance. DEX exposure was found to diminish IGFR-2 immunolocalization in cultured rat IECs, newborn mouse ileal mucosa and human neonatal ileal mucosa. Gene array data indicated that IGFR-2 expression was unchanged with DEX treatment, suggesting a mechanism of protein degradation. CREG immunolocalization and abundance was found to be increased by DEX and immunoneutralization of CREG resulted in the abolition of IGFR-2 degradation. We have concluded that CREG is a secreted mediator by which DEX induces degradation of IGFR-2 and speculate that this is a fundamental mechanism of mucosal growth induction.

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