Abstract

Endometriosis is a debilitating disease affecting 190 million women worldwide and the greatest single contributor to infertility. The most broadly accepted etiology is that uterine endometrial cells retrogradely enter the peritoneum during menses, implant and form invasive lesions in a process analogous to cancer metastasis. However, over 90% of women suffer retrograde menstruation, but only 10% develop endometriosis, and debate continues as to whether the underlying defect is endometrial or peritoneal. Processes implicated in invasion include: enhanced motility; adhesion to, and formation of gap junctions with, the target tissue. Endometrial stromal (ESCs) from 22 endometriosis patients at different disease stages show much greater invasiveness across mesothelial (or endothelial) monolayers than ESCs from 22 control subjects, which is further enhanced by the presence of EECs. This is due to enhanced responsiveness of endometriosis ESCs to the mesothelium, which induces migration and gap junction coupling. ESC-PMC gap junction coupling is shown to be required for invasion, while coupling between PMCs enhances mesothelial barrier breakdown.

Data availability

As described in the MDAR, primary data results are reported as Supplementary Tables for all figures, except for Fig. 5, where data points are shown directly on the plots.Patient data is described, but samples are not available for extrenal use based on patient consent limitationsDNA sequences used for silencing studies are commercially available, and the source listed

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Chun-Wei Chen

    Department of Biochemistry and Structural Biology, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-3318-0349
  2. Jeffery B Chavez

    Department of Biochemistry and Structural Biology, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Ritikaa Kumar

    Department of Biochemistry and Structural Biology, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Virginia Arlene Go

    Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Ahvani Pant

    Department of Biochemistry and Structural Biology, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Anushka Jain

    Department of Biochemistry and Structural Biology, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Srikanth R Polusani

    Department of Biochemistry and Structural Biology, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Matthew J Hart

    Center for Innovative Drug Discovery, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  9. Randal D Robinson

    Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  10. Maria Gaczynska

    Department of Molecular Medicine, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  11. Pawel Osmulski

    Department of Molecular Medicine, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  12. Nameer B Kirma

    Department of Molecular Medicine, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  13. Bruce J Nicholson

    Department of Biochemistry and Structural Biology, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, United States
    For correspondence
    nicholsonb@uthscsa.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1649-7173

Funding

Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD109027)

  • Bruce J Nicholson

Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (RP160844)

  • Bruce J Nicholson

National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (UL1 TR 002645)

  • Bruce J Nicholson

Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (RP150600.)

  • Nameer B Kirma

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.NICHD supported the research project. CPRIT and NCATS supported key resources used extensively in the studies

Ethics

Human subjects: Explicit patient consent was obtained for all endometrial samples used in this study. All samples used in experiments were de-identified to the investigators. Approval for all protocols was obtained through the IRB at the Universoty of Texas Health San Antonio, IRB protocol # 20070728HR (8-31-23).

Copyright

© 2024, Chen et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Chun-Wei Chen
  2. Jeffery B Chavez
  3. Ritikaa Kumar
  4. Virginia Arlene Go
  5. Ahvani Pant
  6. Anushka Jain
  7. Srikanth R Polusani
  8. Matthew J Hart
  9. Randal D Robinson
  10. Maria Gaczynska
  11. Pawel Osmulski
  12. Nameer B Kirma
  13. Bruce J Nicholson
(2024)
Hypersensitive intercellular responses of endometrial stromal cells drive invasion in Endometriosis
eLife 13:e94778.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.94778

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.94778

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