Constitutive production of inflammatory cytokines is a characteristic of many human malignant cell lines, however, the in vitro and in vivo interdependence of these cytokines, and their significance to the human cancer microenvironment, are both poorly understood. Here, we describe for the first time how three key cytokine/chemokine mediators of cancer-related inflammation, TNF, CXCL12 and IL6, are involved in an autocrine cytokine network, the 'TNF network', in human ovarian cancer. We show that this network has paracrine actions on angiogenesis, infiltration of myeloid cells and NOTCH signalling in both murine xenografts and human ovarian tumor biopsies. Neutralising antibodies or siRNA to individual members of this TNF network reduced angiogenesis, myeloid cell infiltration and experimental peritoneal ovarian tumor growth. The dependency of network genes on TNF was demonstrated by their down regulation in tumor cells from patients with advanced ovarian cancer following the infusion of anti-TNF antibodies. Together, the findings define a network of inflammatory cytokine interactions that are crucial to tumor growth and validate this network as a key therapeutic target in ovarian cancer.

PMID: 22065722 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] Source: National Library of Medicine.