BACKGROUND The CXCL12/CXCR4 axis is involved in kidney development by regulating formation of the glomerular tuft. Recently, a second CXCL12 receptor was identified and designated CXCR7. Although it is established that CXCR7 regulates heart and brain development in conjunction with CXCL12 and CXCR4, little is known about the influence of CXCR7 on CXCL12 dependent kidney development. METHODOLO...

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common primary brain tumor in adults. The poor prognosis and minimally successful treatments of these tumors indicates a need to identify new therapeutic targets. Therapy resistance of GBMs is attributed to heterogeneity of the glioblastoma due to genetic alterations and functional subpopulations. Chemokine receptors CXCR4 and CXCR7 play important roles in progres...

CXCL12/CXCR4 signaling is critical for cortical interneuron migration and their final laminar distribution. No information is yet available on CXCR7, a newly defined CXCL12 receptor. Here we demonstrated that CXCR7 regulated interneuron migration autonomously, as well as nonautonomously through its expression in immature projection neurons. Migrating cortical interneurons coexpressed Cxcr4 and ...

Viral genes may act as oncogenes and interact with intracellular proteins, which are related to oncogenesis and tumor growth. Autocrining CXCL12 in growing tumor tissue plays critical roles in modulating cell proliferation and survival through its receptor CXCR4 and CXCR7. Recently, a number of research reports indicated that CXCR7 displays high expression in many kinds of tumor tissues and cel...

To investigate the effects of lentiviral vector-mediated shRNA suppressing CXCR7 on tumour invasion and metastasis in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE). HCCLM3 cell lines were cultured and assigned into the CXCR7-shRNA, negative control (NC) and blank groups. The qRT-PCR and Western blotting were applied to detect the mRNA and protein expressio...

The chemokine receptor CXCR7 binds CXCL11 and CXCL12 with high affinity, chemokines that were previously thought to bind exclusively to CXCR4 and CXCR3, respectively. Expression of CXCR7 has been associated with cardiac development as well as with tumor growth and progression. Despite having all the canonical features of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), the signalling pathways following CXC...

AIM To investigate the role of CXC chemokine receptor (CXCR)-7 and CXCL12 in lymph node and liver metastasis of gastric carcinoma. METHODS In 160 cases of gastric cancer, the expression of CXCR7 and CXCL12 in tumor and matched tumor-adjacent non-cancer tissues, in the lymph nodes around the stomach and in the liver was detected using immunohistochemistry to analyze the relationship between CX...

The proinflammatory chemokine receptor CXCR7 that binds the ligands CXCL11 and CXCL12 (SDF-1a) is elevated in a variety of human cancers, but its functions are not understood as it does not elicit classical chemokine receptor signaling. Here we report that the procancerous cytokine IL-8 (interleukin-8) upregulates CXCR7 expression along with ligand-independent functions of CXCR7 that promote th...

Chemokine receptors CCR5 and CXCR4 are considered the main coreceptors for initial HIV infection, replication and transmission, and subsequent AIDS progression. Over the years, other chemokine receptors, belonging to the family of G protein-coupled receptors, have also been identified as candidate coreceptors for HIV entry into human host cells. Amongst them, CXCR7, also known as atypical chemo...

In mice the chemokine Cxcl12 and its receptor Cxcr4 participate in maintenance of the spermatogonial population during postnatal development. More complexity arises since Cxcl12 also binds to the non-classical/atypical chemokine receptor Cxcr7. We explored the expression pattern of Cxcl12, Cxcr4 and Cxcr7 during postnatal development in mouse testes and investigated the response of Cxcl12, Cxcr...